Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To condemn to everlasting punishment or another terrible fate in the afterlife; doom.
  • intransitive verb To condemn to an undesirable fate; destine.
  • intransitive verb To bring about the failure of; ruin.
  • intransitive verb To denounce or criticize severely.
  • intransitive verb To swear at; curse.
  • intransitive verb To swear; curse.
  • interjection Used to express anger, irritation, contempt, or disappointment.
  • noun The saying of “damn” as a curse.
  • noun Informal The least valuable bit; a jot.
  • adverb & adjective Damned.
  • idiom (damn well) Without any doubt; positively.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To condemn; affirm to be guilty, or worthy of punishment; sentence judicially.
  • To assign to a certain fate; doom.
  • Specifically In theology, to doom to punishment in a future state; condemn to hell.
  • Hence In the imperative, used profanely in emphatic objurgation or contempt of the object, and more vulgarly in certain arbitrary phrases (as damn your or his eyes!) in general reprehension or defiance of a person.
  • To address with the objurgation “damn!”; swear at.
  • To adjudge or pronounce to be bad; condemn as a failure; hence, to ruin by expressed disapproval: as, to damn a play.
  • To use the objurgation “damn!”; swear.
  • noun The verb damn used as a profane word; a curse; an oath.

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

  • intransitive verb To invoke damnation; to curse.
  • transitive verb To condemn; to declare guilty; to doom; to adjudge to punishment; to sentence; to censure.
  • transitive verb (Theol.) To doom to punishment in the future world; to consign to perdition; to curse.
  • transitive verb To condemn as bad or displeasing, by open expression, as by denuciation, hissing, hooting, etc.

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

  • verb theology To condemn to hell.
  • verb To put out of favor; to ruin; to label negatively.
  • verb To condemn as unfit, harmful, of poor quality, unsuccessful, invalid, immoral or illegal.
  • verb profane To curse; put a curse upon.
  • verb archaic To invoke damnation; to curse.
  • adjective profane Generic intensifier.
  • adverb profane awfully, extremely
  • interjection profane Used to express anger, irritation, disappointment, annoyance, contempt, etc. See also dammit.
  • noun The use of "damn" as a curse.
  • noun profane A small, negligible quantity, being of little value.
  • noun profane The smallest amount of concern or consideration.

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

  • noun something of little value
  • adverb extremely
  • adjective used as expletives
  • adjective expletives used informally as intensifiers
  • verb wish harm upon; invoke evil upon

Etymologies

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

[Middle English dampnen, from Old French dampner, from Latin damnāre, to condemn, inflict loss upon, from damnum, loss.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English dampnen, from Old French dampner, from Latin damnare ("to condemn, inflict loss upon"), from damnum ("loss").

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Examples

  • And I'm still damn stressed cuz in 2 weeks 'time will be our science practical mid-year paper, and in 1 month's time will be our mid-year paper… damn…

    babycartercl Diary Entry babycartercl 2004

  • God damn is rare in England, and Englishmen say ‘I don’t care a damn’ much more often than ‘I don’t give a damn.

    Chapter 4. American and English Today. 5. Expletives and Forbidden Words Henry Louis 1921

  • When one of them fired at me I took a dive into the field, and of course your"—he visibly cut off the word damn out of respect for a lady's presence—"your San Francisco fields are more like taking a dive over a cliff.

    Ishmael Barbara Hambly 2000

  • When one of them fired at me I took a dive into the field, and of course your"—he visibly cut off the word damn out of respect for a lady's presence—"your San Francisco fields are more like taking a dive over a cliff.

    Ishmael Barbara Hambly 2000

  • Redneck is gradually giving way to good ol 'boy, and, at least in the Triangle, the term damn Yankee is giving way to just Yankee or the even more acceptable Northern newcomer.

    NewsObserver.com - Home 2009

  • Paige was, in the words of one contemporary, a “raconteur—what we called a damn good liar.”

    Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert Timothy M. Gay 2010

  • Paige was, in the words of one contemporary, a “raconteur—what we called a damn good liar.”

    Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert Timothy M. Gay 2010

  • Scrawled in pencil in one of the margins is the word damn.

    Going Home to Glory David Eisenhower 2010

  • Paige was, in the words of one contemporary, a “raconteur—what we called a damn good liar.”

    Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert Timothy M. Gay 2010

  • Paige was, in the words of one contemporary, a “raconteur—what we called a damn good liar.”

    Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert Timothy M. Gay 2010

Comments

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  • I like this word.

    June 24, 2007

  • Is it short for damnation?

    December 25, 2007

  • Hot damn!

    November 13, 2008

  • Formally Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you; and wildly damn my own folly in having lavished my hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. He goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door savagely.

    -Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw

    (I thought it was rather amusing...)

    August 3, 2009

  • This word has humorously found its way into botanical nomenclature via the naming of three different genera: Damnacanthus, Damnamenia, and Damnxanthodium.

    June 21, 2010