I’m guessing there is, but I don’t know what it might be. I’m talking about items which have a reputation of death and/or ruin around them. Like the Hope diamond, where every owner (or even people who’ve handled it) have all met untimely ends under mysterious circumstances (at least according to legend). Or Oak Island, which is said to have had a vast pirate treasure buried on it, and people have lost their lives/fortunes vainly trying to find it.
Is there a term for those kinds of things besides simply “cursed”?
If there’s a reputation, but you don’t think there actually is a magic spell on the object, you could go with ‘reputedly cursed’ or ‘legendarily cursed’ or something like that.
If there’s no real widespread belief that the object has magical powers, but the owners do appear to have had more than their share of bad luck (e.g. position of drummer for Spinal Tap), you could say ‘seemingly cursed’ or something.
Well, I was hoping that there was a specific descriptor for this kind of “cursed” object, sort of like how houses and certain cars are referred to as a “money pit.”
So basically, is what you need the antonym of talisman? If so, I had no luck finding anything that hasn’t pretty much already been mentioned, but thought I’d throw it out there for you to give it a shot if you wanted to.
