doom.

1. A disastrous fate or approaching destruction, often understood as unavoidable.

2. To condemn someone or something to failure, destruction, or another disastrous fate.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• impending doom
• seal someone’s doom
• sense of doom

On the page

He read the foreclosure notice as the estate's doom.

A sense of doom settled over the household after the will was opened.

She refused to accept the doom everyone else predicted.

Usage notes

Primary category: gothic. Strong and often dramatic, but also common in ordinary English; it may express a character’s belief rather than a certain outcome. The separate verb means to condemn to failure or destruction. Usually uncountable; plural dooms in literary uses for separate fates. Separate verb forms: doom, dooms, doomed, dooming.