Primary
''accursed'' ▫ᴱᴺ|Definition|1st|20260605232103-00-⌔
accursed - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Adjective
accursed (comparative more accursed, superlative most accursed)
- (prenominal) Hateful; detestable, loathsome.
- ✤ Synonyms: execrable, damnable
- ✤ * Accursed race of Tiriel. behold your father//Come forth & look on her that bore you. come you accursed sons.*1
- ✤ Lo! they are charged with studying the accursed cabalistical secrets of the Jews, and the magic of the Paynim Saracens.2
- ✤ […] Alaeddin ate and drank and was cheered and after he had rested and had recovered spirits he cried, “Ah, O my mother, I have a sore grievance against thee for leaving me to that accursed wight who strave to compass my destruction and designed to take my life. Know that I beheld Death with mine own eyes at the hand of this damned wretch, whom thou didst certify to be my uncle; […]3
- (theology) Doomed to destruction or misery; cursed; anathematized.
- ✤ Synonyms: condemned, fey, ill-fated; see also Thesaurus: doomed
- ✤ * Accurſt be he that firſt inuented war*4
- ✤ […] —if any one, be he who he may, attempt to alter the faith once for all delivered, let him be accursed.5
- ✤ For at the very moment I become accursed, at that same highest moment, I become exactly like a heathen […]6
- ✤ We did not come here to waste words in treating with Sauron, faithless and accursed; still less with one of his slaves. Begone!7
Verb
accursed
- simple past and past participle of accurse
Etymology
From Middle English acursed, from acursen (“to curse”), from Old English ācursian, from ā- + cursian, from curs (“curse”). First attested in the 13th century.
Pronunciation
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
c. 1789, William Blake, Tiriel: ↩
1819, Ivanhoe, Walter Scott, Chapter 35: ↩
1885, Richard F. Burton, The Supplemental Nights to the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 532: ↩
c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene iv: ↩
1885, Charles Abel Heurtley, transl., The Commonitory of Vincent of Lérins, Chapter 8: ↩
1912, Fyodor Dostoevsky, chapter 7, in Constance Garnett, transl., The Brothers Karamazov, Book III, translation of original in Russian: ↩
1955, J.R.R. Tolkien, chapter 10, in The Return of the King, Book V: ↩
Secondary
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