The religious belief that a person's soul is condemned to hell, or more generally, complete ruin or failure.
From Old French 'damnation,' derived from Latin 'damnatio' meaning 'condemnation.' The root 'damn' comes from Latin 'damnare' (to condemn or cause loss). The meaning shifted from legal condemnation to spiritual punishment during the Christian medieval period.
The word 'damnation' appears over 90 times in Shakespeare's works, reflecting how profoundly it shaped Renaissance-era dramatic language — audiences were both shocked and thrilled by characters invoking eternal punishment as an exclamation, making it the ultimate curse word of the era.
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