Words at Play : Words With Remarkable Origins, Vol. 1
The story here involves the original Italian word fiasco, which means "glass bottle."
According to one theory, when Venetian glassblowers realized a beautiful piece was flawed, they turned it into an ordinary bottle.
When that happened, a would-be work of art was downgraded into a mere fiasco – which is, according to the theory, how that word came to mean "complete failure."
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