Fiasco is an Italian word meaning ‘bottle’ or ‘flask’, and it was briefly used in this sense when it entered English in the 19th century. However, it was taken up more readily in the sense ‘a ludicrous or humiliating failure’; this came from the Italian phrase far fiasco, literally ‘make a bottle’, a phrase used in Italian theatre to mean ‘fail in a performance’. Fiasco is related to flagon and flask, which come from the same root, Latin flaska.