damning

Pluraldamnings

1. 1
   adjective

   Condemning someone or something, whether by expressing blame or by showing guilt.

   Investigators uncovered damning evidence that the company had hidden the defects for years.

   The auditors' final report was even more damning than the board had feared.

   Similarincriminating, damaging, condemnatory, critical, devastating

   Oppositeexculpatory

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of damn.

   The editor's faint praise ended up damning the novel more than any bad review could.

   Damning a whole generation for one bad decision seems unfair.

   Note

   Every sense of the verb damn, from condemning to cursing, runs through this one form, used as a participle (critics were damning the film) or as a gerund (damning a whole town for one crime). Middle English already had it as dampnynge. The verb takes an object; the adjective meaning condemning takes very or highly and sits before its noun, as in a highly damning report.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A statement or act that condemns someone or something.

   The ruling drew swift damnings from civil rights groups and newspaper editorials.

   His memoir reads as one long damning of the studio system that made him famous.

   Similarcondemnation, denunciation, indictment

   Oppositecommendation

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A curse or oath in which the speaker says "damn".

   Every time a crate slipped off the hoist, the air on the dock filled with oaths and damnings.

   Between the damning and the door-slamming, nobody in the house got any sleep.

   Similarcursing, swearing, curse

   Note

   The swearer's noun, and an old one: Daniel Defoe's An Essay upon Projects (1693) ranks damnings beside asseverations and swearings, oaths that leave no one believed a jot the more. Context keeps it apart from the noun for a condemnation: damnings from the press pass judgment on someone, while damnings shouted from the sideline are only bad language.

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