Catastrophize

//kəˈtæstɹəfaɪz// verb

verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To regard a bad situation as if it were disastrous or catastrophic. intransitive, transitive
  2. 2
    To expose a behavior pattern of seeking the worst interpretation and magnifying the disagreeable outcomes (of). intransitive, transitive

    "Particularly likely to overreact are those who tend to catastrophize (Ellis, 1962) and those who have Type A personalities (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974)."

  3. 3
    To end a comedy. obsolete

Synonyms

All synonyms
awfulize

Example

More examples

"Particularly likely to overreact are those who tend to catastrophize (Ellis, 1962) and those who have Type A personalities (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974)."

Etymology

From catastrophe + -ize.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.