hardship vs catastrophe

hardship and catastrophe both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
hardship	Yes	No	No	No
catastrophe	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, catastrophe is a hyponym of hardship; that is, catastrophe is a word with a more specific, narrower meaning than hardship:

Other hyponyms of hardship include ill-being, disaster, extremity, distress, affliction, victimization, low-water mark, nadir.

hardship (noun)	catastrophe (noun)
something hard to endure	an event resulting in great loss and misfortune
something that causes or entails suffering	a sudden violent change in the earth's surface
a state of misfortune or affliction	a state of extreme (usually irremediable) ruin and misfortune