Meaning & use
doomsday scenario
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Meanings
nouncountable
An imagined future in which something goes terribly wrong and causes huge, often catastrophic, damage.
Grammar: Has a plural: experts described three doomsday scenarios.
Patterns
- a doomsday scenario for something
- a doomsday scenario in which something happens
Scientists have outlined a doomsday scenario in which sea levels rise by several meters.
The bank's worst-case plan covered every doomsday scenario, from a cyberattack to a flood.
Most analysts say the doomsday scenario for the economy is unlikely.
nouncountabledisapproving
A gloomy prediction that someone considers exaggerated, used to criticize alarmist talk.
Grammar: Often used with a negative tone: stop painting doomsday scenarios.
Patterns
- paint a doomsday scenario
- dismiss a doomsday scenario
My brother always paints a doomsday scenario whenever the car makes a noise.
The mayor dismissed the doomsday scenarios as scare tactics.
Critics accused the campaign of spreading doomsday scenarios to win votes.
Word forms
| plural | doomsday scenarios |
|---|
Common combinations
- paint a doomsday scenario
- The report paints a doomsday scenario for coastal towns.
- avoid a doomsday scenario
- Quick action could avoid a doomsday scenario.
- a worst-case doomsday scenario
- In the worst-case doomsday scenario, the dam would fail.
- play out a doomsday scenario
- The film plays out a doomsday scenario involving a virus.
- dismiss a doomsday scenario
- Officials dismissed the doomsday scenario as unrealistic.
Synonyms and how they differ
- worst-case scenario
- Worst-case scenario is more neutral and technical, while doomsday scenario sounds more dramatic and catastrophic.
- catastrophe
- A catastrophe is an actual disaster, but a doomsday scenario is only an imagined version of one.
- nightmare scenario
- Nightmare scenario stresses how frightening a possibility is, with less sense of total destruction.
Opposites
Word family
- doomsday noun
- the day of final judgment or the end of the world
- doomsayer noun
- a person who predicts disaster
- doom noun
- a terrible fate or death
Commonly confused: doomsday scenario or worst-case scenario?
doomsday scenario vs worst-case scenario
A worst-case scenario is simply the worst result that could happen, which can be quite small, while a doomsday scenario implies disaster on a vast scale.
Practice
The engineers said the doomsday scenario, in ___ the whole power grid fails, was very unlikely.
Choose one answer.
The pattern is 'a scenario in which something happens'. Which follows the preposition in, and that cannot be used directly after a preposition.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “doomsday scenario”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.