Damnum

The Lain noun damnum means “damage” or “loss”. The English word damage itself ultimately comes from damnum, via Old French dam, with the suffix -age which forms nouns.

There are some more words that have the same origin, with the substring -damn- or -demn-: condemn, damn, and indemnity. Condemn means “to express strong disapproval, with the intensifying prefix con-. The word damn is often used as an exclamation (an expression of anger) or an adjective or adverb (used to emphasize something, e.g., “damn thing”, “damn lucky”) in an informal speech, but it can also mean “to criticize someone strongly”.

I’m not really familiar with the last one, indemnity1, which means “protection against possible damage or loss”.


  1. U.S. /ɪnˈdemnət̬i/