By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Fiasco
A fiasco is both a complete failure and a style of glass bottle. The bottle has a round body and bottom and is often covered with a close-fitting straw basket such as traditionally are used for Chianti. “Fiasco” was Italian for any glass bottle at one time and has given us the word flask, but how did a glass bottle come to mean a complete failure?
The short answer is no one really knows. The Oxford English Dictionary sums it up by saying “the evolution of fiasco in Italian from flask to flop is of obscure origin.”
There are a number of interesting theories, though. In 1855, the French phrase “faire fiasco” was used as theater slang for a failed performance or complete dismal flop, borrowed from the Italian “far fiasco,” which means “to make a bottle.” This supposedly referred to a cracked bottle thrown aside by Venetian glassblowers who only accepted perfect pieces. Even slight imperfections were viewed as total failures to these master craftsmen. The Italians themselves note that “fare il fiasco” referred to playing a game in which the loser pays a fiasco or bought the next bottle. A fiasco again was associated with failure.
A culturally striking theory suggests that since fiasco was used to describe an empty bottle and an empty bottle has no wine, it was, naturally, tragic! Theories about origins of the word to mean a catastrophe all seem to point back to the cultural and economic importance of wine in Italy which produces more wine than any other country. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Venice, home of master glassblowers that produced fiascos, is also the largest wine producing region in the country.
