1. a sudden and ignominious failure; a fiasco:"the only man to reach double figures in the second-innings debacle"
Word Originearly 19th century (in sense ‘the breaking up of ice in a river’): from French débâcle, from débâcler ‘unleash’, from dé- ‘un-’ + bâcler ‘to bar’ (from Latin baculum ‘staff’).
