Perish
verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 To decay and disappear; to waste away to nothing. intransitive
"1881, Tarafa, translated by W. A. Clouston, The Poem of Tarafa I consider time as a treasure decreasing every night; and that which every day diminishes soon perishes for ever."
- 2 pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life wordnet
- 3 To decay in such a way that it cannot be used for its original purpose intransitive
"The difficulty is that fresh foods perish due to the multiplication in them of harmful bacteria."
- 4 To die; to cease to live. intransitive
"When it goeth well with the righteous, the citie reioyceth: and when the wicked perish, there is shouting."
- 5 To cause to perish. obsolete, transitive
"that closeness did impair and a little perish his understanding"
Example
More examples"We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools."
Etymology
From Middle English perishen, borrowed from Old French perir (via the stem periss- used in various conjugations), from Latin perīre (“pass away, perish”), from per (“through”) + īre (“pass, go”).
Related phrases
More for "perish"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.