Death

//dɛθ// name, noun

name, noun ·Very common ·Middle school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The cessation of life and all associated processes; the end of an organism's existence as an entity independent from its environment and its return to an inert, nonliving state. countable, uncountable

    "My grandfather died a violent death, which saddened the whole family."

  2. 2
    the act of killing wordnet
  3. 3
    The cessation of life and all associated processes; the end of an organism's existence as an entity independent from its environment and its return to an inert, nonliving state.; Execution (in the judicial sense). countable, uncountable

    "The serial killer was sentenced to death."

  4. 4
    the event of dying or departure from life wordnet
  5. 5
    The personification of death as a (usually male) hooded figure with a scythe; the Grim Reaper. capitalized, countable, often, uncountable

    "When death walked in, a chill spread through the room."

Show 8 more definitions
  1. 6
    the permanent end of all life functions in an organism or part of an organism wordnet
  2. 7
    The collapse or end of something. countable, uncountable

    "England scored a goal at the death to even the score at one all."

  3. 8
    the absence of life or state of being dead wordnet
  4. 9
    The collapse or end of something.; A cause of great stress, exhaustion, embarrassment, or another negative condition (for someone). countable, especially, figuratively, uncountable

    "This bake sale is going to be the death of me!"

  5. 10
    a final state wordnet
  6. 11
    Spiritual lifelessness. countable, figuratively, uncountable
  7. 12
    the time at which life ends; continuing until dead wordnet
  8. 13
    the time when something ends wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    The personification of death, often a skeleton with a scythe, and one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

    "Death can be seen on a tarot card."

Synonyms

All synonyms
azraeldeceasedemiseend(the) bane(the) end

Example

More examples

"The convicted drug dealer was willing to comply with the authorities to have his death sentence reduced to a life sentence."

Etymology

From Middle English deeth, from Old English dēaþ, from Proto-West Germanic *dauþu, from Proto-Germanic *dauþuz, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰówtus. More at die. Cognates Cognate with Scots daeth, daith, death, deeth, deith (“death”), North Frisian Duar, duas, düüs (“death”), Saterland Frisian Dood (“death”), West Frisian dea (“death”), Dutch dood (“death”), German Tod, Todt (“death”), Limburgish doead (“death”), Luxembourgish Doud (“death”), Yiddish טויט (toyt, “death”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål død (“death”), Faroese deyði (“death”), Icelandic dauði (“death”), Norwegian Nynorsk daude, død (“death”), Swedish död (“death”), Gothic 𐌳𐌰𐌿𐌸𐌿𐍃 (dauþus, “death”).

Related phrases

Black DeathDarth VaderDeath ValleyEuro death-knotKimberley death adderLife without DeathMongolian death wormYunnan sudden death syndromeaccidental deathanally inflicted death sentenceangel of deathapparent death

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.