Religious

In Western Christian belief, damnation to hell is the punishment of God for persons with unredeemed sin. Damnation can be a motivator for conversions to Christianity. Western Christianity refers to Catholicism, Protestantism, and Anglicanism. ... Medieval illustration of the Mouth of Hell Hell is a place or state of painful suffering. ... The term God (capitalized in English language as a proper noun) is often used to refer vaguely to a Supreme Being. ... Redemption can mean several things: Redemption is a term in Christianity synonymous with salvation, or delivery from sins. ... Sin has been a term most usually used in a religious context, and today describes any lack of conformity to the will of God; especially, any willful disregard for the norms revealed by God is a sin. ... Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life, teachings, death by crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as portrayed in the New Testament writings of his early followers. ...

One conception is of eternal suffocating heat, being taunted by demons for all eternity. In folklore, mythology, and religion, a demon or demoness is a supernatural being that is generally described as a malevolent spirit, but is also depicted as a force that may be conjured and insecurely controlled. ...

Another conception, derived from the scripture about Gehenna is simply that people will be discarded (burned), as being unworthy of preservation by God. Note: Tanach quotes are from the Judaica press Tanach. ...

In both conceptions, Jesus is accepted as the Lamb of God, able by perfect sacrifice to atone for one's sin, though one is required to accept Him. This acceptance is said to constitute salvation from sin, and therefore from damnation (though a debate exists between Christians over the role that works play in salvation). This 11th-century portrait is one of many images of Jesus in which a halo with a cross is used. ... Lamb of God is one of the titles given to Jesus in the New Testament and consequently in the Christian tradition. ... Sacrifice (from a Middle English verb meaning to make sacred, from Old French, from Latin sacrificium : sacer, sacred; sacred + facere, to make) is commonly known as the practice of offering food, or the lives of animals or people to the gods, as an act of propitiation or worship. ... Atonement is reconciliation with God, of people who have sinned. ... Salvation means being saved from suffering of some kind. ...

In Eastern Christian traditions (Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy), it is not seen as a legalistic punishment meted out by an angry and vengeful God for a slight against some set of spiritual rules. Instead, it describes a state of separation from God, a state into which all humans are born but against which Christ is the Mediator and "Great Physician". ... The term Oriental Orthodoxy refers to the churches of Eastern Christian traditions that keep the faith of only the first three ecumenical councils of the undivided Church - the First Council of Nicaea, the First Council of Constantinople and the Council of Ephesus - and rejected the dogmatic definitions of the Council...

Other uses of the word

Sometimes the word damned refers to condemnation by humans, for example this link says "... The Grapes of Wrath was an immediate best-seller, widely praised and almost as widely damned throughout the country. ...". The Grapes of Wrath book cover The Grapes of Wrath is a work of fiction published by John Steinbeck in 1939, in which descriptive, narrative, and philosophical passages succeed one another. ...

Profane language

"Damnation" (or, more commonly, "damn") is widely used as a moderate profanity. Until around the mid-20th century damn was a much more offensive term than it is today (its usage in the film Gone With the Wind in 1939 shocked some audiences), and was frequently represented as "D--n," "D---," or abbreviated to just "D." Profanity is a word choice or usage which its audience considers to be offensive. ... Gone With the Wind was an instant success. ... 1939 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ...

"Damn" is commonly nowadays known as a very mildly profane word and used while cursing or swearing.

Etymology

Its Indo-European origin is a root dap-, which appears in Latin and Greek words meaning "feast" and "expense". (The connection is that feasts tend to be expensive.) In Latin this root provided a theorized early Latin noun *dapnom, which became Classical Latin damnum = "damage" or "expense". This word had not as yet got exclusively religious overtones. From it in English came "condemn"; "damnified" (an obsolete adjective meaning "damaged"); "damage" (via French from Latin damnaticum). It began to be used for being found guilty in court; but, for example, an early French treaty called the Strasbourg Oaths includes the Latin phrase in damno sit = "would cause harm". From the judicial meaning came the religious meaning. Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies Indo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. ... The root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. ... Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Religion, sometimes used interchangeably with faith, is commonly defined as belief concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the practices and institutions associated with such belief. ...