doomster

Noun

doomster (plural doomsters)

1. Someone who predicts doom.
   • Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently, / And though thy birth-hour beckons thee, / Sleep the long sleep: / The Doomsters heap / Travails and teens around us here, / And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.1901, Thomas Hardy, “To an Unborn Pauper Child”, in Poems of the Past and the Present, Edinburgh & London: Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., page 126
   • Chase and Pleasant may have been innocents, but they were smarter than the doomsters who predicted that Chase would lose her fortune, for their New York company, the Ballet Theatre (later the American Ballet Theatre), got off to a phenomenally successful start.1988 January 29, Dorothy Samachson, “Dance Notes: remembering Antony Tudor, conscience of the ABT”, in Chicago Reader

   Synonyms:

   doomsayer, doomer, pessimist

2. (Scotland, archaic) A judge; a deemster.
   • You are of opinion that the justice of an execution consists, not in the extent of the sufferer's crime, or in his having merited punishment, or in the wholesome and salutary effect which that example is likely to produce upon other evil-doers, but hold that it rests solely in the robe of the...1816, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter XXI, in Tales of My Landlord, […], volume III (Old Mortality), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for William Blackwood, […]...