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From Middle Englishapocalips, from Latinapocalypsis, from Ancient Greekἀποκάλυψις(apokálupsis, “revelation”), literally meaning "uncovering", from ἀπό(apó, “back, away from”) and καλύπτω(kalúptō, “I cover”). The sense evolution to "catastrophe, end of the world" stems from the depiction of such events in the biblical Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse of (i.e. Revelation to) John.
A disaster; a cataclysmic event; destruction or ruin.
A nuclear apocalypse would have been possible if tensions went out of control during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 180:
Man has forgotten the soul and thus doomed his civilization to apocalypse.
2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 699:
The Spanish mission in America soon became not so much crusade as apocalypse.
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