Definitions

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

  • noun The human skull as a symbol of mortality or death.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The skull of a human skeleton, or a figure or painting representing such a skull.
  • noun Specifically, in the sixteenth century, a ring with a death's-head on it.
  • noun A name of one of the saimiri or titi monkeys of South America, Chrysothrix sciureus.

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

  • noun A naked human skull as the emblem of death; the head of the conventional personification of death.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a very large European moth (Acherontia atropos), so called from a figure resembling a human skull on the back of the thorax; -- called also death's-head sphinx.

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

  • noun A human skull, as symbol of death.

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

  • noun a human skull (or a representation of a human skull) used as a symbol of death

Etymologies

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Examples

  • His large gray eyes were mainly responsible for this feeling, and they blazed out feverishly from what was almost a death's-head, so thin was the face, the skin of which was a ghastly, dull, dead white.

    Chapter II 2010

  • And all the while, like a death's-head at the feat, silent and motionless, her own unfortunate boy sat and stared at me across the table.

    Confession 2010

  • As the favoured signature of the serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs, the death's-head hawk moth is a harbinger of pestilence and death.

    Indian summer sees exotic moths fly in 2011

  • The cub painted a high-light picture of his poor little room, its oil-stove and the one chair, and of the death's-head tramp who kept him company and who looked as if he had just emerged from twenty years of solitary confinement in some fortress dungeon.

    Chapter 39 2010

  • Sure, politicians like Coburn and Burr can dress them up, but you'd recognize those death's-head grins anywhere.

    Richard (RJ) Eskow: The Burr/Coburn Medicare Plan: 10 Deceptions - And A Free-Market "Death Panel" RJ 2012

  • The death's-head hawk-moth, made famous by the Silence Of The Lambs film, has turned up at the RSPB's Arne nature reserve in Dorset, as well as in Plymouth.

    Heatwave brings rare moths to UK 2011

  • The death's-head hawk moth is the largest moth to fly in Britain and has the ability to fly into beehives in search of honey without being stung.

    Indian summer sees exotic moths fly in 2011

  • Daniel Hertzberg for The Wall Street Journal Colson Whitehead The rollicking gusto of some of the writing, with its overheated adjectives and over-the-top images, is hard to resist: It was the passionless, death's-head skull of a long-dead corpse, instinct with hellish life; and the glazed eyes swollen and bulbous betrayed the thing's blindness.

    Instinct With Hellish Life James Kennedy 2011

  • The death's-head, a forbiddingly charismatic insect with a distinctive skull pattern on its thorax, has been sighted along the south coast at Arne, Dorset, and in Plymouth, Devon, in what is proving to be a vintage autumn for exotic migratory moths.

    Indian summer sees exotic moths fly in 2011

  • Sure, politicians like Coburn and Burr can dress them up, but you'd recognize those death's-head grins anywhere.

    Richard (RJ) Eskow: The Burr/Coburn Medicare Plan: 10 Deceptions - And A Free-Market "Death Panel" RJ 2012

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