Then, of course, “Damned if you do, dammed if you don’t,” might refer to making one into a mother, usually of cattle, horses, etc. Curse in a more general sense, of course, is an emphatically felt desire for ill or harm to come to another.Ĭould an expanded title for this piece be, “Damned if you do, and dammed if you don’t?” – another, somewhat extended parody of the expression equating to “between a rock and a hard place.” The meaning of having to make a choice with no good alternative would be twisted a bit, to choosing a bad option or being blocked (by a metaphorical dam). Then again, there are those that feel sin is a made-up concept, and an anythingarian might well ignore the entire notion, as not being of any particular interest.īut I take your meaning, that damned is often intermingled with other curse words – curse in the Christian sense of impugning the state of another’s soul. Um – depending on your faith, sinners might be redeemed, sometimes.Īnd some feel that living this life on earth, is the living damnation we weren’t saved from. If you remember that it comes, I think, from damNation it helps to remember the N.
The Difference Between "will" and "shall".The result … (Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below: The beavers have done what beavers do – dammed the stream that links one loch with another, allowing them to swim their territory instead of walk it. …LONDON - There are three kinds of lies, goes the old saying popularized by Mark Twain: “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” That’s been on my mind this month as I’ve watched a big scandal over aid workers’ … (… gnawed through by the beaver family, all dead or dying under 3ft of water. Rivers are dammed and sinners are damned. To add to the confusion, the words are often deliberately mixed up by writers for the purpose of creating witty or ironic titles. The main evening news on the BBC recently displayed a graphic for a story about a “damming report” into the UK Ministry of Defence. It’s also easy to miss an incorrect usage because the two words look so similar. Dammed and damned are two words that are often confused, not least because they are homophones they sound the same. Of course, what the piece really meant to say was “dammed” – with a dam on it. The natural landscape of South Korea has been largely re-engineered, with nearly every river damned or forced into concrete channels. An article from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies recently revealed the shocking news that some South Korean rivers have been condemned to eternal punishment :