damn

Verb

damn (third-person singular simple present damns, present participle damning, simple past and past participle damned)

1. (intransitive, transitive) To condemn.
   • The official position is that anyone who does this will be damned for all eternity.
   • Only God can damn.
2. To condemn; to declare guilty; to doom; to adjudge to punishment.
   • He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
   • Lack of access to support services can damn children with disabilities and lesser means to lives where they never harness their full range of abilities.2018 May 12, Stephanie Sinclair, “'What I Learned From Adopting Two Children With Rare Genetic Conditions'”, in Time, archived from the original on 05 Nov 2024

   Synonyms:

   convict, doom

3. To put out of favor; to ruin; to label negatively.
   • I’m afraid that if I speak out on this, I’ll be damned as a troublemaker.
4. To condemn as unfit, harmful, invalid, immoral or illegal.
   • You are not so arrant a critic as to damn them [the works of modern poets] […] without hearing.1708 November 8, Alexander Pope, letter to Henry Cromwell
   • Homosexuality and suicide have some common characteristics. Both are damned by the Western Judeo-Christian culture as sins (although the latter has only been considered such since the sixth century).1976 February 14, David Brill, “Suicide”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 33, page 11

   Synonyms:

   anathematize, demonize, excoriate, vilify

5. (slang, slightly vulgar) To curse; put a curse upon.
   • That man stole my wallet. Damn him!

   Synonyms:

   comminate, execrate, imprecate

6. (archaic) To invoke damnation; to curse.
   • […] while I inwardly damn.c. 1767-1774, Oliver Goldsmith, letter to Mrs. Bunbury

   Synonyms:

   ban, execrate, point the bone

Adjective

damn (not comparable)

1. (slang, slightly vulgar) Generic intensifier. Fucking; bloody.
   • Shut the damn door!
   • Damn freaks!

   Synonyms:

   4ucking, accursed, bally, blasted, bleeding, bleeping, blessed, blimming, blinking, bloody

Adverb

damn (not comparable)

1. (slang, slightly vulgar) Very; extremely.
   • That car was going damn fast!
   • How are you damn quick?

   Synonyms:

   acutely, awfully, almighty, badly, impossibly, beyond, drastically, exceedingly, extraordinarily, highly

Interjection

1. (slang, vulgar) Used to express anger, irritation, disappointment, annoyance, contempt or surprise, etc. See also dammit.

   Synonyms:

   4uck, ay, chihuahua, blast, bugger, bummer, byrlady, consarn it, crap, crud

Noun (1)

damn (plural damns)

1. (error-unknown-tag, slang) The word "damn" employed as a curse.
   • He said a few damns and left.
2. (error-unknown-tag, slang) A small, negligible quantity, being of little value; a whit or jot.
   • The new hires aren't worth a damn.

   Synonyms:

   ace, atom, thought, atomy, aught, bissel, continental, bit, crumb, glimpse

3. (error-unknown-tag, slang) The smallest amount of concern or consideration.
   • I don't give a damn.

Noun (2) capitalized: DAMN

DAMN (uncountable)

1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of diaminomaleonitrile.
   • Several nitrogen heterocycles, including imidazoles,¹⁻³ pyrazines,⁴ and diazepines,^(1, 3) have been prepared from diaminomaleonitrile (DAMN, 1), the tetramer of hydrogen cyanide.1978, Yozo Ohtsuka, “Chemistry of diaminomaleonitrile. 3. Reaction with isocyanate: a novel pyrimidine synthesis”, in Journal of Organic Chemistry, volume 43, number 16, page 3231
   • Diaminomaleonitrile (DAMN), a stable tetramer of HCN, has long been renowned as a precursor for the formation of nucleobases.2016, Yassin Aweis Jeilani, Phoenix N. Williams, Sofia Waltona, Minh Tho Nguyen, “Unified reaction pathways for the prebiotic formation of RNA and DNA nucleobases”, in Physical Chemistry Chemical...
2. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of distributed architecture for mobile navigation.
   • The Distributed Architecture for Mobile Navigation (DAMN) has been successfully used to integrate various independently developed subsystems, providing systems that perform road following, cross-country navigation, or teleoperation while avoiding obstacles and meeting mission objectives.1995, J. K. Rosenblatt, C. E. Thorpe, “Combining multiple goals in a behavior-based architecture”, in Proceedings 1995 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, →DOI, page...
   • In each robot, a path planning algorithm, an obstacle avoidance routine, a slope assessment algorithm, and a task execution unit have all been integrated into a single behavior-based architecture. Navigation is implemented using the DAMN architecture to combine the competing outputs of each...2008, Stephen Williams, Antidio Viguria, Ayanna M. Howard, “A robotic mobile sensor network for achieving scientific measurements in challenging environments”, in Proceedings of the Earth Science...