Doomsday

How to spell doomsday

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce doomsday

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does doomsday mean?

1. nounThe day of final judgement or, more loosely, a time of catastrophic destruction or the end of the world.

Doomsday in a sentence

• The cult leader kept predicting that doomsday would arrive before the new year.

• The film imagines a doomsday scenario in which the power grid fails worldwide.

Where does doomsday come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from Old English, where it appeared as 'domes dæg', literally 'the day of judgement'. The first element, 'dom', meant a judgement, a law, or a decree handed down by a ruler or a court, and it is the same ancestor that gives us the modern word 'doom' and the verb 'deem' (to judge or to consider). The 'dæg' part is simply the everyday word 'day'. In Christian usage the term came to name the Last Judgement, the final reckoning at the end of the world, and from there it broadened into any catastrophic end or final disaster. The spelling preserves the old genitive linking 's', which is why it is 'dooms-day' and not 'doom-day'; remembering that it once meant 'judgement's day' explains that inner s. The famous Domesday Book of 1086 carries the very same word, named because its records were considered as final and unappealable as the Last Judgement.

How the word is built

• doom (Old English dom: judgement, fate)
• -s- (genitive linker)
• day