….and, even now, should the worst come to the worstest, dang my pulpit if I would not shoulder my musket, and wade up to the conjunction of my trowses’ legs in blood, sooner than see one inch of the soil that gave me birth and freedom, violated by an invading foe! The few citations we have found for worstest tend to come from the 19th century, and are typically found when a writer wishes to replicate an ostensibly dialectal form of speech. But given that there is no situation so bad that it cannot be made more so by having someone correct you on your language use we will offer some way of working this word into your conversation.
We do not provide an entry for worstest (or worster) due to the fact that this word is considered to be an improper variant of the superlative worst, and is little used and widely shunned. George Turberuile, The Heroycall Epistles of the Learned Poet Publius Ouidius Naso (translation), 1567 Thus hauing boldly importuned your assistance, and tediously molested your eares with circumstances, leauing now at length to abuse your friendly pacience … wishing to your Honor increase of Nobilitie, with a moste happie lyfe: and after the Catastrophe of this worldly Comedie, (wherein you play a statelye parte) the gladsome ioyes of the euerlasting Seignorie. More recently the word has taken on a broadened meaning, and may be found referring to fiascos of varying levels of direness, such as unsuccessful dinner parties, trips with one's extended family, and unsuccessful attempts to fix the bathroom sink. The original meaning of catastrophe, beginning in the 16th century, was "the final action that completes the unraveling of the plot in a play, especially a tragedy." By the early 17th century the word had taken on a somewhat more momentous meaning, and would often be employed when describing some great calamity.
One of the things that is interesting about the word catastrophe (aside from the fact that it is a lovely-sounding word) is that it has gone from referring to something that is not so bad to describing something terrible, and, in recent years, returning to referring to something that is not so bad.
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