Doom: active form?

[brm]

Hello

He's doomed: passive form, recognized by my dictionary without any needed complement. But is the active form possible ? Could you say for instance:
Unfortunate circumstances doomed his life.
Thank you very much.

 

[Chasint]

The active form is certainly possible but I usually expect the object to be a person, e.g.

The guilty verdict doomed John to a life in prison.

Let's see if anyone disagrees.

 

[Egmont]

"Why do you want to leave your present job?"
"My employer's merger with a company that already had a product in that area doomed our development project."

Etc. I think almost anything can be doomed, including intangible things like hopes and aspirations.

 

[brm]

Thank you for these answers. In anycase, Egmont's example shows that the active form may be used without a complement (introduced by to), which was part of my question. The animate/inanimate subject was certainly the other and the verdict seems hung between British and American Englishes... Anyone else ?
Thank you

 

[Loob]

I don't think there's an AmE/BrE difference, and I do think active doom ss most commonly used with a following "to", as in this freedictionary definition:

doom someone or something to something​

to destine someone or something to something unpleasant. The judgment doomed her to a life in prison. Your insistence on including that rigid clause doomed the contract to failure.​

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.​