From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdoomdoom1 /duːm/ ●○○ verb [transitive] FAILDESTROYto make someone or something certain to fail, die, be destroyed etcbe doomed to failure/defeat/extinction etc Many species are doomed to extinction. The plan was doomed from the start.be doomed to do something We are all doomed to die in the end.Grammar Doom is usually passive. —doomed adjective passengers on the doomed flight
Examples from the Corpus
doom• Even those you thought were doomed.• Half of us are ruthless and the other half are doomed.• None of this means that Gore is doomed.• Yet in the longer term a regime resting upon the narrowing social base of the landowning nobility was doomed.• They had felt she was doomed from the beginning.• But this attempt to carry on as though nothing had happened was doomed from the start.• The threat of a costly legal battle doomed the proposal.• All have been doomed to failure.be doomed to do something• It is lazy to assume that Bush is doomed to fail or that he and his administration are unequipped for the job.• A tenth of people who drank such water are doomed to die, say doctors.• Studies of other disorders show that medications given without such support likely are doomed to fail.• But his resistance was doomed to failure as the courtiers' position was confirmed by several royal decrees.• It was now obvious that repeated military efforts by a single state were doomed to failure.• Once again his efforts were doomed to failure.• If he lived he would be doomed to spend the war as a prisoner.• Like old Charles Foster Kane, they are doomed to stalk the dark, cavernous halls of their Xanadus.doomdoom2 ●○○ noun [uncountable] ENDsomething very bad that is going to happen, or the fact that it is going to happen A sense of impending doom (=coming very soon) gripped her.sense/feeling of doomspell doom for something (=mean that something will be unable to continue or survive) The recession spelled doom for many small businesses. Thousands of soldiers met their doom (=died) on this very field.doom and gloom/gloom and doom (=when there seems to be no hope for the future) Despite these poor figures, it’s not all doom and gloom.COLLOCATIONSadjectivesimpending doom (=likely to happen soon)With a terrible sense of impending doom, he opened the door and went in.certain/inevitable doom (=sure to happen)Some environmentalists have concluded that the planet faces certain doom.verbsspell doom (=mean that something will not continue to exist)Many people predicted that Internet growth would spell doom for the traditional media.meet your doom (=die in an unpleasant way)At the end of the movie, the bad guys met their doom.phrasesa sense/feeling of doomEveryone in the business has a feeling of doom at the moment.doom and gloom/gloom and doom (=bad things that may happen in the future)The newspapers are always full of doom and gloom.a prophet of doom (=someone who says that something bad is going to happen)The prophets of doom were confounded when the team won the championship. Examples from the Corpus
doom• His religion is as much as anything the regression to a past of obedience, disobedience, sin and doom.• When, how-ever, Pentheus only heaped insults and threats upon him, Dionysus left him to his doom.• No one wants to be the bearer of bad tidings, or the herald of impending doom.• I am not going to intrude like the voice of doom, commenting on her choices, her motives, her failings.• There was silence for a moment or two and then, like the voice of doom, Frau Nordern spoke again.• In giving her the chance to shine in front of an appreciative Tory audience Heath probably sealed his own doom.• ElijahA strange man who prophesies doom for the Pequod.• But, given the doom and gloom already surrounding the earliest silent movies, maybe he wasn't joking at all.met ... doom• In this last period of devastation even the gorse bruiser and the rest of the Collector's inventions met their doom.Origin doom2 Old English dom 