Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Inevitable destruction or ruin.
  • noun A decision or judgment, especially an official condemnation to a severe penalty.
  • noun Judgment Day.
  • noun A statute or ordinance, especially one in force in Anglo-Saxon England.
  • transitive verb To condemn to ruination or death.
  • transitive verb To cause to come to an inevitable bad end; destine to end badly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To judge; form a judgment upon.
  • To condemn to punishment; consign by a decree or sentence; pronounce sentence or judgment on; destine: as, a criminal doomed to death; we are doomed to suffer for our errors.
  • To ordain as a penalty; decree.
  • To tax by estimate or at discretion, as on the failure of a taxpayer to make a statement of his taxable property.
  • noun Judgment or decision; specifically, a decision determining fate or fortune; fateful decision or decree: originally in a neutral sense, but now generally implying an adverse decision; as, the court pronounced doom upon the culprits; to fall by doom of battle.
  • noun Fate decreed or determined; fixed fortune; irrevocable destiny.
  • noun Judgment or opinion; discernment.
  • noun The last judgment. See doomsday.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Judgment; judicial sentence; penal decree; condemnation.
  • noun That to which one is doomed or sentenced; destiny or fate, esp. unhappy destiny; penalty.
  • noun Ruin; death.
  • noun obsolete Discriminating opinion or judgment; discrimination; discernment; decision.
  • transitive verb obsolete To judge; to estimate or determine as a judge.
  • transitive verb To pronounce sentence or judgment on; to condemn; to consign by a decree or sentence; to sentence.
  • transitive verb To ordain as penalty; hence, to mulct or fine.
  • transitive verb New England To assess a tax upon, by estimate or at discretion.
  • transitive verb To destine; to fix irrevocably the destiny or fate of; to appoint, as by decree or by fate.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun countable, historical A law.
  • noun countable, historical A judgment or decision
  • noun countable, historical A sentence or penalty for an illegality or type of illegality.
  • noun Death; an adverse or terrible fate, end.
  • noun Destiny, especially adverse.
  • noun An impending severe problem or danger that seems inevitable.
  • noun A feeling of danger, impending danger, darkness or despair.
  • noun sometimes capitalized The Last Judgment; or, an artistic representation of it.
  • verb To condemn to a terrible fate or outcome

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an unpleasant or disastrous destiny
  • verb make certain of the failure or destruction of
  • verb pronounce a sentence on (somebody) in a court of law
  • verb decree or designate beforehand

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English dom, from Old English dōm, judgment; see dhē- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English dōm ("judgement"), cognate with Old Norse dómr, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian "dom"

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Examples

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  • Then, of course, there's doomsday.

    January 7, 2007

  • Mood in reverse.

    July 22, 2007

  • goes with harbinger?

    October 13, 2007

  • I am forced, against all my hopes and inclinations, to regard the history of my people here as the progress of the doom of what I value most in the world: the life and health of the earth, the peacefulness of human communities and households. Wendell Berry "A Native Hill"

    July 19, 2008

  • The bread and the wine had a doom,

    For these were the host of the air;

    He sat and played in a dream

    Of her long dim hair.

    - W.B. Yeats, 'The Host of the Air'.

    September 18, 2009