Funeste

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Bringing death, ruin or serious harm, often in a way that seems ill-fated or ominous
2. Having a deadly or catastrophic effect, the kind of outcome that spells doom for those involved
3. Disastrous and fatal in nature, marked by a sense that misfortune or destruction is inevitable

Etymology: "Funeste" is an older spelling of "funest", and it carries the grim sense of its Latin source: "fūnestus" meant "deadly" or "bringing death," and it was built from "fūnus," the word for a funeral or death itself. The Romans thus treated a death as something that could contaminate or pollute, which is why a funeral rite and a fatal event shared a root. The word reached English by way of French, where "funeste" carried the same meaning of something fatal or disastrous. English speakers borrowed it to describe events, decisions and influences that bring ruin or misfortune, rather than literal burials. The French form kept the final "e" that English later dropped in "funest," so the two spellings are simply variants of one borrowing.

Synonyms: fatal, deadly, lethal

Antonyms: beneficial, salutary