MEANING
1. A disaster so extensive that it destroys or radically changes a place, society, or way of life.
2. The ultimate destruction or transformation of the world imagined in religious or prophetic expectation.
3. A revelation understood as disclosing hidden truth or a future course of events.
Use it for
describing destruction on an overwhelming scale; portraying the collapse of a familiar social world; showing survivors living after a vast catastropheDistinguishes world-scale catastrophe from a final religious reckoning and the older meanings of revelation. Writing functions: Cosmic Horror fallback.
Words that belong together
- an environmental apocalypse
- a nuclear apocalypse
- survive an apocalypse
On the page
The survivors called it an apocalypse, though the orchards beyond the hills still flowered.
The film imagines an environmental apocalypse without a single moment when everyone notices the end.
He read every eclipse as a sign of the coming apocalypse.
The community prepared for the apocalypse by repairing the roof and planting beans.
She recorded the dream as a private apocalypse rather than an ordinary nightmare.
Word forms
- Base
- apocalypse
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Usage notes
Noun: apocalypse, apocalypses. A general disaster can be an apocalypse; the apocalypse often means the world’s final destruction. The capitalized title of a biblical book is not a separate vocabulary entry here. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common; revelation and ancient-text uses specialized (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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