All 6 Uses of
condemn
in
The Scarlet Letter
- But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.
Chpt 1 (definition 1)condemned = found guilty and facing punishment
- The very law that condemned her—
Chpt 5 (definition 1) *condemned = found guilty and forced into a bad situation
- —kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure—free to return to her birth-place, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being—†
Chpt 5 (definition 2)
- —and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her—
Chpt 5 (definition 1)condemned = forced into a bad situation
- They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemning words.
Chpt 11 (definition 2) *condemning = expressing strong criticism of
- But now—since I am irrevocably doomed—wherefore should I not snatch the solace allowed to the condemned culprit before his execution?
Chpt 18 (definition 1)condemned = convicted (found legally guilty)
Definitions:
-
(1) (condemn as in: was condemned to life in prison) force into an undesired activity or situation -- such as to legally sentence someone to punishment
or:
find guilty -- especially in court (and sometimes to death)
or:
provide the means of finding guilty
-
(2) (condemn as in: She condemned their plan) express strong criticism