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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

deem.

To hold in belief or estimation; to adjudge as a conclusion; to regard as being; to evaluate according to one's beliefs; to account.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/diːm/Received-Pronunciation/dim/General-American

  1. To hold in belief or estimation; to adjudge as a conclusion; to regard as being; to evaluate according to one's beliefs; to account.

    ditransitive
    She deemed his efforts insufficient.

  2. To think, judge, or have or hold as an opinion; to decide or believe on consideration; to suppose.

    ambitransitive

  3. To judge, to pass judgment on; to doom, to sentence.

    obsolete · transitive

  4. To adjudge, to decree.

    obsolete · transitive

  5. To dispense (justice); to administer (law).

    obsolete · transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English dēmen (“to judge; to criticize, condemn; to impose a penalty on, sentence; to direct, order; to believe, think, deem”), from Old English dēman (“to decide, decree, deem”), from Proto-West Germanic *dōmijan, from Proto-Germanic *dōmijaną (“to judge, think”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to set, put”). The word is cognate with Danish and Norwegian Bokmål dømme (“to judge”), Dutch doemen (“to condemn, foredoom”), North Frisian dema (“to judge, recognise”), Norwegian Nynorsk døma (“to judge”), Swedish döma (“to judge, sentence, condemn”), Finnish tuomita (“to judge”). It is also related to doom.

noun/diːm/Received-Pronunciation/dim/General-American

  1. An opinion, a judgment, a surmise.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English deme, from the verb (see above).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.