0 something planned that goes wrong and is a complete failure, usually in an embarrassing way:
Is not the air-raid precautions scheme the greatest fiasco ever known?
We had the absolute fiasco of the gap year last summer.
They are unpopular even before the spectacle of a flotation fiasco doomed to partial or total failure despite the hidden write-off of £5·5 billion debt.
It is an apt phrase for a fiasco that cost £13.5 billion, which still haunts the industry's reputation today.
Despite hundreds of false testimonies and the plethora of fabricated evidence, the indictment is turning into a fiasco.
The operation was a fiasco.
The by-election turned into a political fiasco.
In the early to mid 1990s when it became apparent that this initial stimulus to the private market had been a costly fiasco, there was a considerable consumer backlash.
