Damnedest

adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    One's best effort. uncountable

    ""Fancy was doing her damnedest to pull her own oar and the boys were tripping all over themselves to treat her like a lady.""

Verb
  1. 1
    second-person singular simple past indicative of damn archaic, form-of, indicative, past, second-person, singular
Adjective
  1. 1
    superlative form of damned: most damned; surprising, remarkable, amazing. form-of, superlative

    ""And the damnedest thing happened. I was dreaming, but in my dream I was dreaming. It was the damnedest thing, really.""

Synonyms

All synonyms
damngoddamngoddamnedunredeemedaccursedconfounded

Example

More examples

"That's the damnedest story I ever heard."

Etymology

From damned + -est.

Related phrases

do one's damnedest

More for "damnedest"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.