Tarnation

//tɑɹˈneɪʃən// adj, adv, intj, noun

adj, adv, intj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act or process of damnation or reprobation; hell. archaic, countable, regional, uncountable

    "What in tarnation is going on?"

  2. 2
    Someone or something that causes trouble; troublemaker. countable, obsolete, uncountable

    "I would say more, but RADLEY's come up to tell me I must go and meet that tarnation BANCROFT."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Bothersome; devilish.

    "Now you go 'long back to the house, Marm Winthrop, and if riding 'longside of a popish priest don't speerit me into the bottomless pit, I'll be blamed if I don't go some day into his church and find out what all that tarnation lingo means."

  2. 2
    Generic intensifier.

    "Some time in the month o' August, I think it wur, I found myself in London wi'out a tarnation cent."

Adverb
  1. 1
    Very; extremely.

    "He was so tarnation black you couldn't see him except in the middle of the day."

Intj
  1. 1
    Used to express anger, irritation, disappointment, annoyance, contempt, etc. archaic

    ""Tarnation! You all right?" "Hell, no, I ain't all right!""

Synonyms

All synonyms
damnationdamnation

Example

More examples

"I am Offul maazed. Wheer in tarnations es that theer plaguy girl?"

Etymology

From darnation, influenced by tarnal (from eternal); see darn.

Related phrases

what in tarnation

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