damned  (dāmd)  adj. damned·er (dām'dər), damned·est (dām'dĭst)
Used as an intensive: a damned poor excuse. n. Souls doomed to eternal punishment. 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). |