disaster waiting to happen
4
4.3
- idiom
- Informal
:
desastre inminente
- This event looks like another riot and disaster waiting to happen.
Wow, a giant slow moving disaster waiting to happen is getting his own blimp.
- Wow, a giant slow moving disaster waiting to happen is getting his own blimp.
Examples
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The US is a nuclear disaster waiting to happen.
Blog text (22) -
Forty years ago, when I was teaching environmental biology, the Amazon rainforest was cited as a disaster waiting to happen due to deforestation.
Blog text (2) -
And this guy is a disaster waiting to happen.
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This is a disaster waiting to happen...
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"I think it's a disaster waiting to happen," he said.
Blog text (28) -
Why bring kids into this disaster waiting to happen?
Blog text (19) -
This is one of those disasters waiting to happen.
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If I had to guess, I'd say it's a disaster waiting to happen.
Blog text (11) -
Doesn't seem like a disaster waiting to happen.
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The overcrowding and lack of public facilities is a disaster waiting to happen, he said.
Synonyms
44
2.9
A time when people could be hurt or killed
26
4.6
A problem that will become dangerous in the future if not fixed
12
5.1
A plan or organization that seems strong but is actually weak and likely to fail
A very serious situation likely to have bad results
How Risky
- Informal
3
5.2
- Informal
4
4.3
∞
1.2
6
3.2
Surface Forms
Morphology
disaster + waiting + to + happen
The phrase is compositionally built from 'disaster' (a serious harmful event) plus the predictable temporal phrase 'waiting to happen' (about to occur), so a learner who knows the constituent words can infer that it describes something likely to lead to disaster. This construction is a productive, cross-linguistically common pattern for imminent negative outcomes, making the meaning readily derivable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Disaster waiting to happen paints a simple picture: something unsafe, like a rickety bridge or exposed wires, is just waiting to cause a disaster. So it means 'very likely to lead to serious trouble or failure'.