Definitions

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

  • noun The act of dying; termination of life.
  • noun The state of being dead.
  • noun The cause of dying.
  • noun A manner of dying.
  • noun A personification of the destroyer of life, usually represented as a skeleton holding a scythe.
  • noun Bloodshed; murder.
  • noun Execution.
  • noun Law Civil death.
  • noun The termination or extinction of something.
  • idiom (at death's door) Near to death; gravely ill or injured.
  • idiom (be the death of) To distress or irritate to an intolerable degree.
  • idiom (death on) Opposed to or strict about.
  • idiom (put to death) To execute.
  • idiom (to death) To an intolerable degree; extremely.
  • idiom (to the death) Until one participant in a fight or struggle has died or been killed.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Cessation of life; that state of a being, animal or vegetable, in which there is a total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions, In the abstract.
  • noun Actual.
  • noun Figurative or poetical.
  • noun [In poetry and poetical prose death is often personified.
  • noun A general mortality; a deadly plague; a fatal epidemic: as, the black death (which see, below).
  • noun The cessation of life in a particular part of an organic body, as a bone.
  • noun A skeleton, or the figure of a skeleton, as the symbol of mortality: as, a death's head.
  • noun A cause, agent, or instrument of death.
  • noun Imminent deadly peril.
  • noun A capital offense; an offense punishable with death.
  • noun The state or place of the dead.
  • noun The mode or manner of dying.
  • noun Something as dreadful as death.
  • noun In Scripture: The reverse of spiritual life; the mere physical and sensuous life, without any activity of the spiritual or religious nature.
  • noun After physical death, the final doom of those who have lived and died in separation from God and the divine life.
  • noun A slaughtering or killing.
  • noun To be passionately fond of; have a great liking or capacity for: as, he was death on the sherry.
  • noun Mortally; to death.
  • noun Synonyms Death, Decease, Demise. See decease.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The cessation of all vital phenomena without capability of resuscitation, either in animals or plants.
  • noun Total privation or loss; extinction; cessation.
  • noun Manner of dying; act or state of passing from life.
  • noun Cause of loss of life.
  • noun Personified: The destroyer of life, -- conventionally represented as a skeleton with a scythe.
  • noun Danger of death.
  • noun Murder; murderous character.
  • noun (Theol.) Loss of spiritual life.
  • noun Anything so dreadful as to be like death.
  • noun See Black death, in the Vocabulary.
  • noun the separation of a man from civil society, or the debarring him from the enjoyment of civil rights, as by banishment, attainder, abjuration of the realm, entering a monastery, etc.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A venomous Australian snake of the family Elapidæ, of several species, as the Hoplocephalus superbus and Acanthopis antarctica.
  • noun a bell that announces a death.
  • noun a light like that of a candle, viewed by the superstitious as presaging death.
  • noun a cold sweat at the coming on of death.

Etymologies

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

[Middle English deeth, from Old English dēath; see dheu- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English deeth, from Old English dēaþ, from Proto-Germanic *dauþuz (compare West Frisian dead, Dutch dood, German Tod, Swedish död), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰówtus. More at die.

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Examples

  • Promoted to Headline (H3) on 8/21/09: On 'death panels,' 'socialized medicine' and other red herrings yahooBuzzArticleHeadline = 'On \'death panels, \' \'socialized medicine\ 'and other red herrings'; yahooBuzzArticleSummary = 'Article: Ain\'t it a shame our so-called liberal media is obsessed with "death panels" of fevered imaginations rather than death panels that exist in the real world, notably in our present health-care system?'

    On 'death panels,' 'socialized medicine' and other red herrings 2009

  • So in the next verse -- "If he continues a day or two," his death shall not be avenged by the _death_ of the _master_, for in that case the crime was to be adjudged

    The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4 American Anti-Slavery Society

  • Now, sir, he offers us nothing but unconditional submission to political death; and not political alone, but absolute _death_.

    The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus American Anti-Slavery Society

  • All the distresses growing out of inequalities in human condition; as wealth and power on one side, and poverty and weakness on the other, were terminated by death; the grave brought both to a level: the small and the great are there, and there, (that is, in the grave,) he adds, the servant is free from his master; made so, evidently, by _death_.

    Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartrwright on This Important Subject E. N. [Editor] Elliott

  • So in the next verse, "If he continue a day or two," his death is not to be avenged by the _death_ of the _master_, as in that case the crime was to be adjudged _manslaughter_, and not

    The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus American Anti-Slavery Society

  • So in the next verse, "If he continue a day or two," his death is not to be avenged by the _death_ of the _master_, as in that case the crime was to be adjudged _manslaughter_, and not _murder_.

    The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4 American Anti-Slavery Society

  • He felt that he was dying -- "The taste of death," he said to his sister-in-law, "is already on my tongue -- _I taste death_; and who will be near to support my Constance if you go away?"

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. Various

  • So in the next verse, "If he continue a day or two," his death is not to be avenged by the _death_ of the _master_, as in that case the crime was to be adjudged _manslaughter_, and not _murder_.

    The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus American Anti-Slavery Society

  • So in the next verse, "If he continue a day or two," his death is not to be avenged by the _death_ of the _master_, as in that case the crime was to be adjudged _manslaughter_, and not

    The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4 American Anti-Slavery Society

  • So in the next verse -- "If he continues a day or two," his death shall not be avenged by the _death_ of the _master_, for in that case the crime was to be adjudged

    The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus American Anti-Slavery Society

Comments

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  • "There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to Man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident. And even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation." - J.R.R. Tolkien

    March 13, 2007

  • "Death is but a sleep and a forgetting..." (Wordsworth)

    THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

    If large rats can be called squirrels,

    and death can be called sleep,

    then ANY thing is possible!

    --Jan Cox

    August 19, 2007

  • "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."

    November 12, 2007

  • Be happy! There is so much to appreciate in this life, you can find good in all things! Even death, you have such fear over this subject. But just stop and look! Look and see that there is joy! The joy for the one who has past to another plane.�?

    - A Duck in Inwood Hill Park,

    New York City, 2007, via Coryelle Kramer

    .

    March 13, 2009

  • In Peer Gynt, Death is known as the Button-Moulder. God commands him to melt Peer down to a button.

    April 20, 2009

  • false opinions, severe illness

    July 22, 2009

  • "He bathed my temples and his hands smelt like death."

    -The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux

    What on Earth does death smell like???

    July 25, 2009

  • “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.�?

    Norman Cousins

    October 27, 2009