anathema

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A formal ecclesiastical ban, curse, or excommunication.
2. n. A vehement denunciation; a curse: "the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue” ( Nathaniel Hawthorne).
3. n. One that is cursed or damned.
4. n. One that is greatly reviled, loathed, or shunned: "Essentialism—a belief in natural, immutable sex differences—is anathema to postmodernists, for whom sexuality itself, along with gender, is a 'social construct'” ( Wendy Kaminer).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A person or thing held to be accursed or devoted to damnation or destruction.
2. n. A curse or denunciation pronounced with religious solemnity by ecclesiastical authority, involving excommunication. This species of excommunication was practised in the ancient churches against incorrigible offenders. Churches were warned not to receive them, magistrates and private persons were admonished not to harbor or maintain them, and priests were enjoined not to converse with them or attend their funerals. Also called judiciary anathema. The formula, “which if anybody deny let him be anathema,” is commonly added to the decrees of ecclesiastical councils, and especially to the doctrinal canons of ecumenical councils. It is denied by some theologians that the idea of a curse properly belongs to the anathema as used in the Christian church. See excommunication.
3. n. Hence Any imprecation of divine punishment; a curse; an execration.
4. n. Anything devoted to religious uses.
5. n. A phrase, properly two separate words (see etymology), occurring in the following passage, where it is popularly regarded (and hence sometimes elsewhere used) as an intenser form of anathema.
6. n. Synonyms and Curse, Execration, etc. See malediction.

Wiktionary

1. n. A ban or curse pronounced with religious solemnity by ecclesiastical authority, often accompanied by excommunication; denunciation of anything as accursed.
2. n. An imprecation; a curse; a malediction.
3. n. Any person or thing anathematized, or cursed by ecclesiastical authority.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A ban or curse pronounced with religious solemnity by ecclesiastical authority, and accompanied by excommunication. Hence: Denunciation of anything as accursed.
2. n. An imprecation; a curse; a malediction.
3. n. Any person or thing anathematized, or cursed by ecclesiastical authority.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a formal ecclesiastical curse accompanied by excommunication
2. n. a detested person