Other forms: dooms
Doom is a terrible fate that cannot be avoided. Meet your doom, a sense of doom, doomed from the start.
The inevitability is what makes it doom rather than danger. A sense of impending doom is a recognised clinical symptom and a serious one. Note that the Old English dom meant simply a judgement — doomsday is judgement day, and the Domesday Book is named from the same word.
1noundoomA terrible fate that cannot be avoided.
“The sailors knew they were heading to their doom as the storm grew worse.”
doom is a fate.
Old English dom means a judgement or law. Doomsday is judgement day, and deem comes from the same judging.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁-
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰóh₁mos
Proto-Germanic
*dōmaz
Proto-West Germanic
*dōm
Old English
dōm — judgement
Middle English
doom
English, today
doom
From Middle English doom, dom, from Old English dōm (“judgement”), from Proto-West Germanic dōm, from Proto-Germanic dōmaz, from Proto-Indo-European dʰóh₁mos. 2 Compare Dutch doem (“condemnation, doom; judgement”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish dom (“judgement”), Faroese and Icelandic dómur (“judgement”), Gothic 𐌳𐍉𐌼𐍃 (“insight, judgement”); also Ancient Greek θωμός (“heap”), Bulgarian, mk, Russian and Ukrainian ду́ма (“thought”), Polish duma (“pride”). a doublet of duma. See also deem.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA