tragedy

CEFRB2

/ˈtɹæd͡ʒɛdi/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A very sad event, often involving death or great loss.

  2. 02

    noun

    A serious play or story ending in disaster.

Examples

  • As a rule, I prefer a comedy to a tragedy.

  • It was a great tragedy for them to lose their only son.

At a glance

Sits at B2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
4

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings
  1. A disastrous event, especially one involving great loss of life or injury.

  2. The genre of such works, and the art of producing them.

  3. A drama or similar work, in which the main character is brought to ruin or otherwise suffers the extreme consequences of some tragic flaw or weakness of character.

More examples

In context
  • It's a tragedy that she died so young.

  • We saw a farmhouse burning down in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. And we rolled right past that tragedy 'till we turned into some road house lights.

  • […] last month's flooding in the Buffalo Creek Valley […]. The tragedy took more than one hundred lives[…]

Quick test

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Question 1 · Quick check

The plane crash was a terrible blank that killed all passengers on board.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From the Middle English tragedie, from the Old French tragedie, from the Latin tragoedia, from the Ancient Greek τραγῳδία (tragōidía, “epic play, tragedy”), from τράγος (trágos, “male goat”) + ᾠδή (ōidḗ, “song”), possibly a reference to the goat-satyrs of the theatrical plays of the Dorians, or according to Beekes possibly to a goat given as prize, though the etymology remains uncertain.