Fiasco - Definition and Overview

A fiasco (pl. fiascoes) means a complete or ridiculous failure, especially of a pretentious undertaking.

The word is originally Italian and means a rounded wine bottle, sometimes wrapped by a straw basket, such as used traditionally for the Chianti wine. The metaphorical connection is "they wanted the wine but all they got was an empty bottle."

Fiasco is the English title of a science fiction novel by Stanislaw Lem. It tells about an expedition sent to a distant star in order to make contact with a civilization that had been detected there. The attempt ends, as the title promises, in complete failure.

Fiasco is also a software development project that aims to build a micro-kernel for GNU/Linux.

Some famous fiascoes

• The Mongols first attempt at invading Japan -- see Kamikaze.
• The Iridium project.
• The Japanese fifth generation computer systems project.
• The dot-com bubble.

Example Usage of Fiasco