Doomsman

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who predicts or believes in impending doom or catastrophe
2. An individual characterized by a pessimistic outlook on the future and the belief in inevitable disaster
3. Someone who expresses or embodies ideas related to impending tragedy or apocalyptic events

Etymology: Before it described a gloomy forecaster, this word named a judge. Middle English "domesman" was a person who pronounced judgment, built from "doom," meaning a legal sentence or decision, plus "man," with a linking "-s-" like the one in "kinsman." The word's first job was procedural: to deliver the verdict. The modern sense grows from the older meaning of "doom." Its judicial sense, the formal pronouncement that settles a case, gradually narrowed toward a sentence that ends in ruin, and then toward ruin itself. The pessimist is therefore a judge who has turned his verdict on the future, handing down a sentence on what is coming rather than on what has happened.