1. Pronounced to be at fault or guilty; lying under condemnation. (Also absol. with the.)
1543. in Sc. Pasquils (ed. Maidment), 420. Bukis or warkis of condampnit heretikis.
1588. A. King, trans. Canisius’ Catech., 68. The auld condamned Anabaptists.
1598. Grenewey, Tacitus’ Ann., III. x. (1622), 79. So long the condemneds life should be prolonged.
1712. Steele, Spect., No. 504, ¶ 5. The bodies of condemn’d malefactors.
1791. Gent. Mag., LXI. II. 750. [The Inhabitants of gaols] are divided into different classes of male and female felons, king’s evidences, the condemned to die.
1873. Morley, Rousseau, II. 65. Her own share … in the production of the condemned book.
2. Adjudged or officially pronounced unfit for use.
1798. Nelson, in Nicolas, Disp. (1845), III. 200. To throw all the condemned provisions … overboard into the Sea.
3. Appropriated to condemned persons, or things rejected, as in condemned cell, pew, etc.
c. 1678. P. Cook, in R. L’Estrange’s Brief Hist. Times, III. (1688), 78. In the Place call’d the Condemn’d Hole.
1717. Hist. Press-Yard, 7. I was conducted to the door leading out of the lodge into the Condemn’d Hold.
1722. De Foe, Col. Jack (1840), 145. The poor fellow … is in your condemned hole.
1818. Baldw. Brown, Mem. J. Howard, v. 135. ‘The pit’ and within it, the condemned cell, both dirty and offensive.
1836. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Visit to Newgate. The condemned pew; a huge black pew in which the wretched people who are singled out for death are placed, on the Sunday preceding their execution. Ibid. (1838), O. Twist, lii. They led him to one of the condemned cells.
1884. A. Griffiths, Chron. Newgate, 434. Excluded from the Newgate Chapel on the day the condemned sermon was preached.
4. Fastened or closed up (as a door).
1884. C. Reade, in Harper’s Mag., April, 680/1. I let him in by the condemned door.
