damned. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

damned

PRONUNCIATION:	dmd
ADJECTIVE:	Inflected forms: damned·er (dmdr), damned·est ( dmdst) 1. Condemned, especially to eternal punishment. 2. Informal Deserving condemnation; detestable: this damned weather. 3. Used as an intensive: a damned fool.
ADVERB:	Inflected forms: damneder, damnedest Used as an intensive: a damned poor excuse.
NOUN:	Souls doomed to eternal punishment.
REGIONAL NOTE:	There are many regional variants, mostly euphemisms, for damned, both as an oath and as a mild intensive. Southern exclamations and intensives tend to begin with dad–, a euphemism for “god”—hence dadblamed, dadblasted, dadburn, and dadgum. Dadgum can be combined with it in the interjection dadgummit. Another such euphemism is the better-known doggone, probably originally Southern but now widespread. Like dadgum, doggone is used as a mild intensive: “The best doggone deals in Alabama” (billboard in Montgomery). Doggone likewise appears in phrasal interjections: Doggonit, I dropped my hammer. A common Southern and South Midland variant of damned is durn, also euphemistic and relatively mild, as in this snatch of Baltimore dialogue: “If that's not just the weirdest durn thing I ever laid eyes on” (Anne Tyler).


The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.