Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Death as a personification or as a philosophical notion.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun Greek mythology Ancient Greek God of peaceful or natural death.
  • noun psychoanalysis the death drive in Freudian psychoanalysis.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (Greek mythology) the Greek personification of death; son of Nyx
  • noun (psychoanalysis) an unconscious urge to die

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek Θάνατος (Thánatos).

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Examples

  • Here, Thanatos is being positively deployed against Eros.

    Nasty, Brutish, and Short 2008

  • Here, Thanatos is being positively deployed against Eros.

    Nasty, Brutish, and Short 2008

  • Freud talks about the death drive, which others refer to as the Thanatos drive.

    Which US citizens are fighting against "truth and justice"! 2007

  • Freud talks about the death drive, which others refer to as the Thanatos drive.

    War is peace and also votes. 2007

  • His own horse he called Thanatos, which means Death.

    The Flight of the Shadow George MacDonald 1864

  • He said he chose the name Thanatos - a minor figure in Greek mythology who personified "death" - as his persona because street people told him that was all they had to look forward to.

    msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines 2011

  • I give you the health of 'Thanatos' -- the leviathan of artillery, the winged bearer of death and destruction -- and of its inventor, Herr von Heckmann.

    The Man Who Rocked the Earth Arthur Cheney Train 1910

  • The fragrance evoked an aroma of fruits and flowers so ripe, they are starting to decay, reminding us of Thanatos, which is forever inseparable from Eros.

    Archive 2007-07-01 Marina Geigert 2007

  • Furthermore, most cultures do have real or imagined varieties of religion that are malign in purpose, or which celebrate or are at least somehow expressive of what Freud called Thanatos, the "death instinct."

    Archive 2006-01-08 2006

  • Furthermore, most cultures do have real or imagined varieties of religion that are malign in purpose, or which celebrate or are at least somehow expressive of what Freud called Thanatos, the "death instinct."

    THE DARKEST NIGHT by Peter Saxon (Paperback Library 1967) 2006

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