fratricide

fratricide (countable and uncountable, plural fratricides)

From Middle French fratricide or its etymon Latin frātricīdium.

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The new accusation brought by Urban against Manfred of murdering his sister-in-law's embassador – it may be observed that, tacitly, he acquits him of parricide, fratricide, and nepoticide – requires a little explanation.

1856, Mrs. William Busk, Mediæval Popes, Emperors, Kings, and Crusaders: Or, Germany, Italy and Palestine, from A.D. 1125 to A.D. 1268, volume IV, London: Hookham and Sons, →OCLC, page 294:

Terms related to familicide include filicide (the killing of one's child or children), uxoricide (the killing of one's wife), fratricide or sororicide (the killing of one's brother or sister), avunculicide (the killing of one's uncle), and nepoticide (the killing of one's nephew).

2014, Albert Lee Strickland, “Familicide”, in Michael John Brennan, editor, The A–Z of Death and Dying: Social, Medical, and Cultural Aspects, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, pages 205–206:

The killing of one's brother (or sister).

From January on, Third Army also spent a good deal of energy trying to solve the problem of fratricide, the killing or injuring of one's own forces by what is ironically called 'friendly fire,'[…]

1999, Richard M. Swain, Lucky War: Third Army in Desert Storm, DIANE Publishing, page 180:

Such a press of arms invites many opportunities for unintentional fratricide.

2007 September 25, Bungie, Halo 3, Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360, level/area: Terminal Six (Legendary):

(military, by extension) The intentional or unintentional killing of a comrade in arms.


cremains

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Blend of cremated + remains. Apparently originally a euphemism used by undertakers.

Some people prefer to keep the cremains in their homes in a special place.

1992, Kathleen Sublette, Martin Flagg, Final Celebrations: A Guide for Personal and Family Funeral Planning, page 52:

Paul's cremains arrived by limo service less than an hour before the living room memorial.

2009, Mugan Sozan Peter Schellin, Rogue Monk: A Memoir about Zen, Disability, and Work, page 93:

Because of these remaining bone fragments, the cremains must be pulverized to a grainy powder before any scattering of ashes.

2010, Norman L. Cantor, After We Die: The Life and Times of the Human Cadaver, page 111:


widow

en-verb

widow (third-person singular simple present widows, present participle widowing, simple past and past participle widowed)

widows (present singular third-person)
widowing (participle present)
widowed (participle past)
widowed (past)

PIE word
 *dwóh₁
From Middle English widwe, from Old English widuwe, from Proto-West Germanic *widuwā, from Proto-Germanic *widuwǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁widʰéwh₂, possibly from *h₁weydʰh₁-, *widʰ- (“to separate, split, cleave, divide”), whence also wood from Old English widu, wudu.
Cognates include German Witwe, Dutch weduwe, Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐌳𐌿𐍅𐍉 (widuwō), Old Irish fedb, Latin vidua, Old Church Slavonic въдова (vŭdova), Sanskrit विधवा (vidhavā) and Persian بیوه (bive, bêva), Middle Persian wēwag, Avestan viðavā- "widow" .

(transitive) To make a widow or widower of someone; to cause the death of the spouse of.


widower

From Middle English widwer, equivalent to widow + -er.

Tears of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these; […]

1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XIII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 20:

What happens to the lovers of people with AIDS? How do they experience the passage from lover to caregiver to "widower"?

1988 April 2, Lori Kenschaft, “Film on lovers of PWAs in works”, in Gay Community News, page 6:

A man whose spouse has died (and who has not remarried); a man in relation to his late spouse; masculine of widow. [from 14th c.]

wewenaar

a man whose spouse has died and who has not remarried


capital punishment

en-noun

capital punishment (countable and uncountable, plural capital punishments)

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From the original meaning of capital (“relating to the head”); originally referring to executions by beheading or decapitating.

The practice of putting a person to death as a punishment for a crime.

dënim me vdekje

punishment by death — see also death penalty

महादण्ड m (mahādaṇḍa, literally “the greatest punishment”)


repose

repose (countable and uncountable, plural reposes)

Berthe Morisot
Rhode Island School of Design Museum
Édouard Manet

The verb is derived from Middle English reposen (“to rest”), from Anglo-Norman reposer, reposir, and Middle French reposer, from Old French reposer, repauser (“to become calm; to be peaceful; to rest; to be immobile; to lie or be placed; to cease, stop; to neglect”) (modern French reposer), from Latin repausāre, the present active infinitive of repausō (“(Late Latin) to be at rest; to lie down, rest; to sleep; to calm, pacify; (Latin) to halt temporarily, pause”), from re- (prefix meaning ‘again; back, backwards’) + pausō (“to cease, halt; to pause”) (from pausa (“a halt, stop; a pause; an end”), from Ancient Greek παῦσῐς (paûsĭs, “ceasing, stopping”), from παύω (paúō, “to cease; to make to cease, stop; to bring to an end; to hinder”) (further etymology uncertain; possibly from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂w- (“few, little; smallness”)) + -σῐς (-sĭs, suffix forming abstract nouns or nouns of action, process, or result)).
The noun is derived from Late Middle English repose, from Anglo-Norman repous, repos, and Middle French repos, repose, from Old French repos (“calm; rest; period or state of sleep; state of immobility; state of inaction”) (modern French repos), from reposer, repauser (verb) (see above).
Noun sense 12.3 (“technique of including in a painting an area or areas which are dark, indistinct, or soft in tone”) is borrowed from French repos.
Cognates
Catalan reposar (verb), repòs (noun)
Italian riposare (verb), riposo (noun)
Old Occitan repausar, repauzar (verb), repaus (noun)
Portuguese repousar (verb), repouso (noun)
Spanish reposar (verb), reposo (noun)

ref

From the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.

col

Cognates

հանգիստ

temporary cessation from activity to rest and recover, especially in the form of sleep; an instance of this — see also break, rest

lepo

of the face, a muscle, etc.: state of being relaxed and not in tension

(uncountable) Temporary cessation from activity to rest and recover, especially in the form of sleep; rest; (countable) an instance of this; a break, a rest; a sleep.

(uncountable) Of the Virgin Mary: death; also assumption into heaven.


give up the ghost

en-verb

give up the ghost (third-person singular simple present gives up the ghost, present participle giving up the ghost, simple past gave up the ghost, past participle given up the ghost)

gives up the ghost (present singular third-person)
giving up the ghost (participle present)
gave up the ghost (past)
given up the ghost (participle past)

Literally, to release one's spirit or soul from the body at death. From Middle English "gaf up þe gost", "ʒave up þe gost", from Old English phrases as "hēo āġeaf hire gāst" (literally, "she gave up her ghost [spirit]"), "þæt iċ gāst mīnne āġifan mōte" (literally, "that I must give up my ghost [spirit]"). Compare German den Geist aufgeben and Dutch de geest geven.
Perhaps most notable and survived in modern English for being used in traditional translation during the death of Jesus during His crucifixion:
The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], 1611, →OCLC, Matthew 27:50: “¶ Iesus, when hee had cried againe with a loud voice, yeelded vp the ghost.”

And Ieſus cryed with a loude voice, and gaue vp the ghoſt.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Mark 15:37:

(intransitive, idiomatic) To cease clinging to life; to die.


carrion

en-adj

carrion (comparative more carrion, superlative most carrion)

more carrion (comparative)
most carrion (superlative)

The noun is derived from Middle English careine, caroigne (“dead body, corpse; animal carcass; reanimated corpse; gangrenous or rotting body or flesh; mortal nature; (derogatory) living body; (figurative) disgusting or worthless thing”), borrowed from Anglo-Norman careine, caroigne, charogne, and Old French charoigne, Northern Old French caˈronië, caroine, caroigne (modern French charogne), probably from Vulgar Latin *carōnia, from Latin caro (“flesh”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to cut off, sever; to divide, separate”)) + -ia (suffix forming nouns). Doublet of crone.
The regular modern English form would be *carren, *carron /ˈkæɹən/ (this is found dialectally; see similar kyarn); the intervening /i/ is probably a hypercorrection based on the analogy of words like merlin/merlion.
The adjective is derived from the noun.

der

O hell! vvhat haue vve heere, a carrion death? / VVithin vvhoſe empty eye there is a vvritten ſcroule, / Ile reade the vvriting.

c. 1596–1598 (date written), W[illiam] Shakespeare, The Excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. […] (First Quarto), [London]: […] J[ames] Roberts [for Thomas Heyes], published 1600, →OCLC, [Act II, scene vii], signature [D4], recto:


buy the farm

en-verb

buy the farm (third-person singular simple present buys the farm, present participle buying the farm, simple past and past participle bought the farm)

buys the farm (present singular third-person)
buying the farm (participle present)
bought the farm (participle past)
bought the farm (past)

Not known with certainty. Two long-held hypotheses are as follows: One describes combat soldiers wistfully wishing to go back home, buy a farm, and live peacefully there; later, after they had been killed in combat, their fellow soldiers would say that they had bought the farm (compare the established metaphor pattern of having gone to that big [whatever sort of nice place] in the sky). Another links the phrase to the idea that governments compensate farmers whose land is damaged by a military aircraft crash; a deceased pilot was thus said to have bought the farm, and the term eventually entered wider use.

You're just as dead if you buy the farm in an "incident" as if you buy it in a declared war.

1959, Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers, page 131:

Then tracers laced the sky in front of me. Forget the shooting! If I get distracted now, I'll buy the farm anyway!

BETTY. Shoot, if I knew you was gonna buy the farm I coulda asked for everything you got in the world... How were you gonna do it? ¶ROGER (takes revolver out of briefcase). With this.

1995, Steve Allen, “Having a Good Time”, in Ann McDonough, Kent R. Brown, editors, A Grand Entrance, published 2000, →ISBN, page 212:

They gambled with as much reckless abandon as they flew their airplanes. They knew they might buy the farm tomorrow.

2002, W. Barry Baird, Vietnam Journey, →ISBN, page 171:

(idiomatic, US, informal, euphemistic) To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash.


slaughter

en-noun

slaughter (countable and uncountable, plural slaughters)

slaughters (plural)
slaughtre (alternative obsolete)

From Middle English slaughter, from Old Norse *slahtr, later sláttr, from Proto-Germanic *slahtrą, from Proto-Germanic *slahaną. Equivalent to slay + -ter (as in laughter). Eventually derived from Proto-Indo-European *slak- (“to hit, strike, throw”). Related with Dutch slachten, German schlachten, Finnish lahdata (all “to slaughter”).

der

(uncountable) The killing of animals, generally for food.

1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book VI, 1773, The First Six Books of Milton's Paradise Lost, Edinburgh, page 416,
For ſin, on war and mutual ſlaughter bent.

[…] I ſee
Th’ Inſulting Tyrant prancing o’er the Field
Strow’d with Rome’s Citizens, and drench’d in Slaughter,
His Horſe’s Hoofs wet with Patrician Blood.

1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC, Act I, scene i, page 2:

A massacre; the killing of a large number of people.


go the way of the dodo

en-verb

go the way of the dodo (third-person singular simple present goes the way of the dodo, present participle going the way of the dodo, simple past went the way of the dodo, past participle gone the way of the dodo)

goes the way of the dodo (present singular third-person)
going the way of the dodo (participle present)
went the way of the dodo (past)
gone the way of the dodo (participle past)
go the way of the Dodo (alternative)
go the way of the dodo bird (alternative)

/ˈɡəʊ ðə ˌweɪ ə(v)ðə ˈdəʊdəʊ/

/ˈɡoʊ ðə ˌweɪ ə(v)ðə ˈdoʊˌdoʊ/

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) was a flightless bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, which is believed to have become extinct in the 17th century due to human activity.

Now that word-processing has caught on, typewriters have gone the way of the dodo.

The Polynesian population, for instance, is on the wane—wearing out—as the Red Man is—as the whale is,—going the way of the dodo, and so many other things.

1854 November 11, “No Motu; or, Reef-rovings in the South Seas. A Narrative of Adventures at the Hawaiian, Georgian and Society Islands. By Edward T. Perkins. New York, Pudney & Russell; London, Trübner & Co.”, in The Athenæum: Journal of Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts, number 1411, London: […] J[ohn] Francis. …, →OCLC, page 1361, column 1:

It is long since that disorderly potentate [the Lord of Misrule] went the way of the Dodo, and hippocras has become almost as mythical as ambrosia; but, once upon a time, they played a prominent part in legal education.

1861 November 23, J. Hamilton Fyfe, “High Days in the Temple”, in The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, volume V, number 126, New York, N.Y.: Leavitt, Trow, & Co., →OCLC, page 610, column 2:

[W]e confess that we should feel a lively satisfaction if we could see the sailor who set his dog at the helpless mass of ovine misery [sheep transported by ship across the English Channel] properly tied down in a conspicuous place on the deck of his ship, stripped to his waist, and then treated to such an allowance of the cat-of-nine-tails (if that animal has not gone the way of the dodo and the great auk) as would make him hate the taste of mutton for the rest of his natural life.

1869 September 18, “Cattle at Sea”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume 28, number 725, London: […] David Jones, […], →OCLC, page 380, column 1:

We must have game laws for the Arctic seals, and a "close time" for seals as well as for gulls, or else all these animals will go the way of the dodo.

1876 July, “Art. VII.—1. Histoire de France, jusqu’à 1794. Par Jules Michelet, Professeur Suppléant à la Faculté des Lettres. Paris: Hachette. 1860. [et al.]”, in The London Quarterly Review, volume XLVI, number XCII, London: […] [T]he proprietors, […], →OCLC, page 440:

If the silver dollar goes the way of the dodo and the whooping crane, much of the glamour and the polish and the distinction which any entity of the Government has in celebrating its centennial will be gone.

1964 May 27, Mike Mansfield (witness), “Statement of Hon. Mike Mansfield, a U.S. Senator from the State of Montana”, in Treasury–Post Office Departments and Executive Office Appropriations for 1965: Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate, Eighty-eighth Congress, Second Session, on H.R. 10532 […], Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 500:

Developed by the same people who invented MP3, mp3PRO is a new format that offers better sound quality than normal MP3s. However, at the time of writing it seems that music fans couldn't care less, and mp3PRO may well go the way of the dodo, the 8-track cartridge and George Michael's solo career.

2003, Gary Marshall, “Music Technology from A to Z”, in The Cut the Crap! Guide to Music Technology, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire: Artemis Editions, →ISBN, page 110:

[H]istorians have turned from the past to the future, concerned with what will happen to their professional calling in the decades and centuries to come, fearful that in this age of instant communication and gratification, when an era as recent as the sixties can seem to our students as remote as the Wars of the Roses was to us in our college days, that history is going the way of the dodo.

2007, Robert A. Rosenstone, “Space for the Bird to Fly”, in Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan, Alun Munslow, editors, Manifestos for History, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 11:

For most of the world, the LP has unfortunately gone the way of the dodo. But although LPs are far from the public eye, they've never really gone away.

2009, Daniel Briere, Pat Hurley, “Treating Your Ears to Music”, in Home Theater for Dummies (For Dummies), 3rd edition, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, part II (Getting Video and Music into Your Theater: Source Devices), page 69:

If you imagine, then, that the travelling journeyman is simply an anachronism – and went the way of the Dodo, or the Luddites – there would, admittedly, be more than a grain of truth in your reaction. But you would be only partly right.

2009, Andrew Price, “Corporate Collateral: Globalization and the Efficiency Delusion”, in Slow-tech: Manifesto for an Overwound World, London: Atlantic Books, →ISBN, page 89:

The semi-formality of that era, along with any sense of attaining even a modicum of comfort in anything but first class [of an aeroplane], has gone the way of the Dodo.

2009 April 1, Greg Stott, “Flying”, in Notes from Beyond the Fringe: Collected Works of Greg Stott, Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 24:

If your prime broker goes the way of the dodo, you can realistically expect that all cash on the books will be gone in the same instance and in the worst case scenario you will also be unable to liquidate your futures positions for days or perhaps weeks.

2013, Andreas F. Clenow, “Year by Year Review”, in Following the Trend: Diversified Managed Futures Trading, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, →ISBN, page 207:

(idiomatic) To go extinct or become obsolete or defunct; to fall out of common practice or use; to become a thing of the past.

to go extinct or become obsolete; to fall out of common practice or use

käydä kuin dodoille (subject in allative)

käydä kuin dinosauruksille (subject in allative)


underworld

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(religion or mythology) The world of the dead, located underneath the world of the living; the afterlife.

тот свет m (tot svet, literally “that world”)


beat a dead horse

beat<,,beat,beaten:beat􂀿colloquial􂁀> a dead horse

beat a dead horse (third-person singular simple present beats a dead horse, present participle beating a dead horse, simple past beat a dead horse, past participle beaten a dead horse or (colloquial) beat a dead horse)

beats a dead horse (present singular third-person)
beating a dead horse (participle present)
beat a dead horse (past)
beaten a dead horse (participle past)
beat a dead horse (colloquial participle past)
flog a dead horse (alternative)

After having shown us three hours of instructional and safety videos, the inspector was simply beating a dead horse by telling us to buckle up as we got into the van.

The library director believes the argument about “professionalism” is a “dead horse we should stop beating.”

1992, William A. Katz, Reference Services and Reference Processes, McGraw-Hill, →ISBN, page 220:

A friend, the political scientist Irving Bernstein, told me that political scientists and historians are inclined to regard the question of objectivity as a dead horse that one should stop beating, and maintained that it is not the scholar but the lay person who has problems with objectivity.

1999, Fredrick Carl Redlich, Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page xii:

I won’t stop beating this dead horse until (male) TV executives stop this sexist practice.

2016, Anthony Livingston Hall, The iPINIONS Journal: Commentaries on the Global Events of 2015, volume XI, iUniverse, →ISBN:

(idiomatic) To persist or continue far beyond any purpose, interest or reason.


pushing up daisies

pushing daisies (alternative)
pushing up the daisies (alternative)

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snuff it

snuff it (third-person singular simple present snuffs it, present participle snuffing it, simple past and past participle snuffed it)

snuffs it (present singular third-person)
snuffing it (participle present)
snuffed it (participle past)
snuffed it (past)

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That cat must have been twenty years old when he finally snuffed it.

1975, Monty Python, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Python (Monty) Pictures Limited
Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.

"Is it those mad horse things?" said Ron uncertainly, staring at a point slightly to the left of the Thestral Harry was patting. "Those ones you can’t see unless you’ve watched someone snuff it?"

2003, J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:


gas chamber

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There was this boy I sent to the gas chamber at Huntsville here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killed a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again.

2007, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men (motion picture), spoken by Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones):

A sealed chamber in which people are executed with poison gas.

غُرْفَة اَلْغَاز

a sealed chamber in which people are executed with gas


crib death

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(pathology, US) The unexplained death of a baby usually while sleeping.

mort sobtada

the unexplained death of a baby usually while sleeping


lifeless

en-adj

lifeless (comparative more lifeless, superlative most lifeless)

more lifeless (comparative)
most lifeless (superlative)
liveless (alternative obsolete)

From Middle English lyfles, lifles, from Old English līflēas (“lifeless”), equivalent to life + -less. Cognate with West Frisian libbensleas (“lifeless”), Dutch levenloos (“lifeless”), German leblos (“lifeless”), Danish livløs (“lifeless”), Swedish livlös (“lifeless”), Icelandic líflaus (“lifeless”).

a farther paſſion feeds my thoughts,
With ceaſeleſſe and diſconſolate conceits,
Which dies my lookes so liueleſſe as they are,
And might, if my extreames had ful euents,
Make me the gaſtly counterfeit of death.

c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene ii:


femicide

en-noun

femicide (countable and uncountable, plural femicides)

femicides (plural)
feminicide (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-femicide.wav

From Latin fēm- + -icide, derived from fēmina (“woman”) after the model of homicide, genocide, etc.

One of the most pernicious nuisances of London is the insistence of voluptuaries, who, relying on the respectability of their rank, and the weight of their purse, endevour in open day to seduce young women who attract their attention in the public streets!... This species of delinquency may be denominated femicide; for the monster who betrays a credulous virgin, and consigns her to infamy, is in reality a most relentless murderer!

1801, John Corry, A Satirical View of London, pages 59-60:

But when Mexican feminists hit the streets on Valentine’s Day to denounce their country’s worsening femicide crisis, she saw a chance to ensure her mother’s life and death were remembered.

2020 March 7, Tom Phillips, “'This is our feminist spring': millions of Mexican women prepare to strike over femicides”, in The Guardian:

Mexico is tied with Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia as the countries with the fourth-highest rates of femicide in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the latest data from the United Nations economic commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, at 1.3 such deaths for every 100,000 women in 2023.

2025 May 14, “Mexican beauty influencer shot dead during TikTok live stream”, in The Guardian, sourced from Reuters, →ISSN:

The killing of a woman or girl, originally (figurative) with reference to loss of virtue but now usually (law) specifically because of their gender and especially such a killing by a man motivated by misogyny.


tyrannicide

tyrannicide (countable and uncountable, plural tyrannicides)

From French tyrannicide, from Middle French tyrannicide, from Latin tyrannicīda. Equivalent to tyrant + -cide.


NDE

NDE (countable and uncountable, plural NDEs)

Ring sees both the NDE and UFOE as modern day shamanic initiations in which the journeyer (NDEer or UFOer) enters an "imaginal" reality, an alternative reality that coexists with physical reality and that is equally real.

1992, Spirited Women Book Company (publisher), At the Crossroads, page 48:

However, Dr Rommer believed that despite the NDEs being distressing, it still had positive, life-changing effects such as the NDEr becoming less judgemental and feeling an increased love of life and heightened sense of morality.

2014, Penny Sartori, Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences, Watkins Media Limited, →ISBN:

near-death experience
near-death experience#English

(countable) Initialism of near-death experience.


resurrect

en-verb

resurrect (third-person singular simple present resurrects, present participle resurrecting, simple past and past participle resurrected)

resurrects (present singular third-person)
resurrecting (participle present)
resurrected (participle past)
resurrected (past)

(transitive) To restore to a working state.


Atropos

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From Ancient Greek Ἄτροπος (Átropos, “inflexible, not turning”), from ᾰ̓- (ă-, “not”) + -τροπος (-tropos, “turned”).

bor

(Greek mythology) One of the three Fates, or Moirae; a daughter of Zeus and Themis; the cutter of the thread of life, depicted as an old woman. Her Roman counterpart is Morta.


Hermes

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From the Ancient Greek Ἑρμῆς (Hermês), itself of disputed meaning and origin, possibly of non-Indo-European substrate origin or from Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to bind, put together”).

der

(art) A head or bust on a square base, often double-faced.


deathblow

deathblows (plural)
death blow (alternative)

A strike or blow that leads to death, especially a coup de grace.

another nail in one's coffin

something that brings something to an end


what a way to go

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(set phrase) A remark on the unfortunate, exceptional, or unusual nature of somebody's death.


Death

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Death can be seen on a tarot card.

7 And when hee had opened the fourth seale, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, & his name that sate on him was Death, and hell followed with him: and power was giuen vnto them, ouer the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword, & with hunger, and with death, and with the beastes of the earth.

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Revelation 6:7–8:

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion!

1843 December 19, Charles Dickens, “Stave Four. The Last of the Spirits.”, in A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, page 137:

He had drunk more than was fit for him, and he was singing some light song, when he saw approaching, as he said, the pale horse mentioned in the Revelation, with Death seated as the rider.

1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:

The personification of death, often a skeleton with a scythe, and one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.


Holocaust

en-prop

the Holocaust (usually uncountable, plural Holocausts)

the Holocaust (canonical)
Holocausts (plural)

Tok Pisin: Holokos

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Among Soloway’s congregants injured in the attack was Barbara Steinmetz, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who has become one of the most poignant symbols of the attack.

2025 June 5, Grace Gilson, “Boulder’s ‘shocked and traumatized’ Jewish community takes stock of losses and strengths”, in The Times of Israel:

(historical, strictly) The systematic mass murder (genocide) of six million Jews perpetrated by Nazi Germany shortly before and during World War II.

Sjoa

the mass murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany

Holocaust

the mass murder of 11–14 million people by Nazi Germany


Mors

(Roman mythology) The god and personification of death; the Roman counterpart of Thanatos.


Te

From Coptic ⲧⲏ (tē), from Egyptian d-wA-t:dwAt (“dwꜣt”). Doublet of Duat.

der

<i class="Latn mention" lang="egy">dwꜣt</i>

(Egyptology, Egyptian mythology) The realm of the dead in Egyptian mythology.


COD

en-noun

COD (countable and uncountable, plural CODs)

CODs (plural)
CoD (alternative)
C.O.D. (alternative)

(countable) Initialism of cause of death.


do in

en-verb

do in (third-person singular simple present does in, present participle doing in, simple past did in, past participle done in)

does in (present singular third-person)
doing in (participle present)
did in (past)
done in (participle past)

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By the eighth mile, I was sure that finishing the 10-mile hike would do me in.

We very nearly did in an entire keg of beer that weekend.

So if Sunday you're free why don't you come with me and we'll poison the pigeons in the park
And maybe we'll do in a squirrel or two while we're poisoning pigeons in the park

1959, Tom Lehrer, “Poisoning Pigeons In The Park”, in An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer:

Slasher fans rejoiced—for a couple years anyway, until the boom swiftly faded, done in by the same causes that fell so many other eruptions of a style or genre, of any medium: The host of imitators are never as good as what inspired the affection in the first place.

2017 October 27, Alex McLevy, “Making a Killing: The Brief Life and Bloody Death of the Post-Scream Slasher Revival”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 2018-03-05:

(transitive, colloquial) To kill or end; to defeat.


dead cat bounce

en-noun

dead cat bounce (plural dead cat bounces)

dead cat bounces (plural)
dead-cat bounce (alternative)

From the idea that a cat dropped from a height might bounce without this indicating any actual life after hitting the ground.

Now, if you look at the chart of a stock that has suffered a collapse, you will see that at the bottom of each drop there is a small uptick, a rise in the price. This uptick, representing the smart money getting out because it knows what is coming, and fools getting in because they don't, is known as the dead cat bounce, so-called because if you drop a dead cat off a skyscraper the cat will bounce, too, but the movement doesn't mean the cat is alive.

1988, Sarah Graves [pseudonym; Mary Squibb], The Dead Cat Bounce (Home Repair is Homicide Series; 1), New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, →ISBN:

There's this thing called the Dead Cat Bounce. It's a stock market term, I believe. What it's talking about is the fact that even a stock that is essentially worthless and really going nowhere but down for ever can register a slight upward movement, just for a bit, because there is generally a floor for almost everything. The comparison rests on the fact that even when a cat hits the pavement from forty stories high and dies instantly, it'll still bounce back up a little.

2002, Iain Banks, “Dead Cat Bounce”, in Dead Air, London: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN:

Avoid taking a position in stocks that show dead-cat bounces. Those stocks see their price drop at least 15 percent in one session. A stock showing a dead-cat bounce tends to bounce higher and then decline, sometimes suffering additional dead-cat bounces three and six months later (if earnings related[…]).

2013, Thomas N. Bulkowski, “Swinging Tools and Setups”, in Swing and Day Trading: Evolution of a Trader, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 163:

financial instrument
financial instrument

(trading, idiomatic) A temporary recovery in the price of a financial instrument which has fallen rapidly and is expected to fall further in the long run.

Library of Congress
New York Stock Exchange
U.S. News & World Report

Dead-Cat-Bounce

temporary recovery in the price of an instrument


sororicide

sororicide (countable and uncountable, plural sororicides)

From Latin sorōricīdium (“killing of one’s sister”), from soror (“sister”) + -cīdium (“killing”). Equivalent to Latin soror (“sister”) + -cide (“killing”).

suffix

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Terms related to familicide include filicide (the killing of one's child or children), uxoricide (the killing of one's wife), fratricide or sororicide (the killing of one's brother or sister), avunculicide (the killing of one's uncle), and nepoticide (the killing of one's nephew).

2014, Albert Lee Strickland, “Familicide”, in Michael John Brennan, editor, The A–Z of Death and Dying: Social, Medical, and Cultural Aspects, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Publishing Group, →ISBN, pages 205–206:


necrophobia

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From necro- + -phobia, by analogy with necrophilia.

Funerals are ten times worse with necrophobia in addition to grief.


ethnic cleansing

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Possibly a calque of Serbo-Croatian etničko čišćenje, though this is probably attested later. Popularized by (and still often associated with) the wars in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s; however, versions of the phrase have been attested since the 1860s in various languages (with the earliest attestation translating directly to the phrase being Romanian purificare etnică from 1941) and it probably arose independently on numerous occasions.

clq

These television stations are part of the apparatus and power of Milosevic. This is the apparatus he has used to do the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

1999 April 24, Martin Kettle, Alex Brummer, quoting Tony Blair, “The bombing goes on”, in The Guardian:

(euphemistic) The mass expulsion or killing of people belonging to one ethnic group by those of another.


Styx

A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name / Great Gorgon, prince of darknes and dead night, / At which Cocytus quakes and Styx is put to flight.

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 13:

For two-and-twenty years he [Doctor Guillotin], unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar’s.

1837, Thomas Carlyle, chapter IV, in The French Revolution: A History […], volume I (The Bastille), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, book IV (States-General):

Bornless one / As darkness bright / Found not in tongues / Found not in light / Bring down the rain / Drain waters of Styx / Faustian luminary / Redeem blaspheme / Like a day without the dawn / Like a ray void of the sun / Like a storm that brings no calm / I'm most complete yet so undone

2014, “O Father O Satan O Sun!”, performed by Behemoth:

(Greek mythology) The river, in Hades, over which the souls of the dead are ferried by Charon.


spermicidal

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By surface analysis, sperm + -i- + -cide + -al.


ride a horse foaled by an acorn

en-verb

ride<,,rode,ridden> a horse foaled by an acorn

ride a horse foaled by an acorn (third-person singular simple present rides a horse foaled by an acorn, present participle riding a horse foaled by an acorn, simple past rode a horse foaled by an acorn or (obsolete) rid a horse foaled by an acorn, past participle ridden a horse foaled by an acorn)

rides a horse foaled by an acorn (present singular third-person)
riding a horse foaled by an acorn (participle present)
rode a horse foaled by an acorn (past)
rid a horse foaled by an acorn (obsolete past)
ridden a horse foaled by an acorn (participle past)
mount a horse foaled by an acorn (alternative)
ride a horse foaled of an acorn (alternative)

En-au-ride a horse foaled by an acorn.ogg

An allusion to the oak used to construct the gallows.

You'll ride on a horſe that was foal'd of an acron.
That is; the gallows.

1670, John Ray, “Proverbial Phraſes”, in A Compleat Collection of Engliſh Proverbs, 4th edition, published 1768, page 197:

"What ho, my kiddy!" cried Job, "don't be glimflashy; why you'd cry beef on a blater; the cove is a bob cull, and a pal of my own; and moreover, is as pretty a Tyburn blossom as ever was brought up to ride a horse foaled by an acorn."

1828, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, chapter 82, in Pelham: or The Adventures of a Gentleman, page 385:

Fourteen, sir. No age to be riding a horse foaled by an acorn, I can tell you.

2003, Michael Crummey, River Thieves, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 272:

A sheep stealer, the mother told the child... and now the man twisted there, riding a horse foaled by an acorn, as the saying went, while the fat Welsh sheep in safety grazed the green pasture all around.

2008, Barbara Ker Wilson, The Lost Years of Jane Austen, Ulysses Press, →ISBN, page 21:

(obsolete, slang) To be hanged on the gallows.


all-a-mort

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How fares my Kate? What, sweet one, all-a-mort?

c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

Alternative form of alamort (“dejected”).


Killing Fields

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Coined by Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran in 1984.

coinage

A number of sites in Cambodia where mass slaughter of some 2,000,000 people was carried out by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

殺戮戰場 /杀戮战场

sites in Cambodia where mass slaughter was carried out


SIDS

The evidence clearly showed that ETS increased the risk of SIDS, but the panel couldn’t decide whether that risk was caused by prenatal smoking, postnatal ETS, or both.

2010, Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway, chapter 5, in Merchants of Doubt:

sudden infant death syndrome
sudden infant death syndrome#English

(medicine, pathology) Acronym of sudden infant death syndrome.


six feet under

"Six feet" refers to the traditional depth to which graves are dug.

My grandparents are six feet under.

(idiomatic, euphemistic) Buried six feet underground; not alive; dead.


deadly

en-adj

deadly (comparative deadlier or more deadly, superlative deadliest or most deadly)

deadlier (comparative)
more deadly (comparative)
deadliest (superlative)
most deadly (superlative)

From Middle English dedly, dedlych, dedlich, from Old English dēadlīċ (adjective), from Proto-West Germanic *dauþalīk, from Proto-Germanic *dauþalīkaz (“deadly”, literally “deathly”). By surface analysis, dead + -ly. Cognate with Saterland Frisian dodelk (“deadly”), West Frisian deadlik (“deadly”), Dutch dodelijk (“deadly”), German tödlich (“deadly”), Swedish dödlig (“deadly, fatal, mortal”), Icelandic dauðlegur (“mortal”).
The adverb is from Middle English dedliche, from Old English dēadlīċe (adverb), from the adjective.

cog

But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶[…]The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window[…], and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the hedge, little dreaming that the deadly tube was levelled at them.

1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC:

[…] others search for new and deadlier gases, or for soluble poisons capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole continents […]

1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 9, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia, August 2001, part 2, page 177:

The killing of more than 90 journalists in Iraq in 43 months after the invasion was to mark it out as one of the deadliest conflicts to cover.

2007, Naomi Sakr, Arab Television Today:


sudden infant death syndrome

en-noun

sudden infant death syndrome (uncountable)

(pathology) The sudden and unexplained death of an infant aged one month to one year, normally while sleeping.


necromantic

necromantics (plural)
necromantick (alternative)

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With all the necromantics of their art.

1745, [Edward Young], “Night the Eighth. Virtue’s Apology: Or, The Man of the World Answer’d. In which are Considered, the Love of this Life; the Ambition and Pleasures, with the Wit and Wisdom of the World.”, in The Complaint: Or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality, London: […] G. Hawkins, […], →OCLC:


obsequy

obsequies (plural)
obsequie (alternative obsolete)

From Middle English obseque, from Old French obseque, osseque, from Latin obsequiī (“complaisant, yielding”), alteration of obsequia (“compliance”) (by confusion, in association with exsequia (“funeral rites”), from exsequī (“follow or accompany to the grave”)).

uder

And to the ladyes he reſtored agayn / The bodyes of her huſbandes yͭ were ſlayn / To done obſequies as tho was the gyſe.

1478, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales:

And to the ladies he restored again / The bodies of their husbands that were slain / To do obsequies as then was the custom.

It was a rather ghastly ceremony, but it was the only means in our power of showing our respect to the faithful dead and of celebrating his obsequies.

1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

But, to-day, there were no obsequies to observe at all.

1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 13

(chiefly in the plural) A funeral rite or service.


floater

From float + -er (suffix forming agent nouns).

paikanvaihtaja

person without a fixed or lasting affiliation, position, or role

kelluva esine

thing which physically floats in a gas or liquid

leijuri

thing which moves from place to place, as if floating

A dock worker saw him floating against a dock pier and called the police. Condition of the body they thought a floater that had been hit by a boat and cut by the prop.

2017 September 18, E. J. Stauffer, chapter 3, in The Drowning, Bloomington, Ind.: Archway Publishing, →ISBN:

A person who physically floats in a gas or liquid.

(law enforcement, slang) A corpse floating in a body of water.


inquest

From Middle English enquest, from Old French enqueste (Modern French enquête), from Vulgar Latin inquirere, or from Medieval Latin inquesta < in + Latin quaesita.

The inquest on keeper Davidson was duly held, and at the commencement seemed likely to cause Tony Palliser less anxiety than he had expected.

1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 4, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC:

However, the 'accidental death' verdict of the jury in the inquest into the Croydon tram accident of November 2016 is the latest episode in a saga that seems likely to prevent the full story of this eminently preventable disaster from ever being exposed.

2021 August 25, Christian Wolmar, “Croydon tram crash: the questions haven't been answered”, in RAIL, number 938, page 58:

A formal investigation, often held before a jury, especially one into the cause of a death

kuolemansyyn selvittämislautakunta

jury hearing an inquest into the cause of death

kuolinselvitys

result of an inquest into the cause of death


post mortem

From Latin post (“afterwards”) + mortem, from mors (“death”).

postmortem (alternative)
post-mortem (alternative)

The hospice's standard procedure for post mortem room cleaning looks very thorough.

We shouldn't let these post mortem injuries distract us while looking for the cause of death.

The post mortem timeline is incomplete.

Having been inflicted or having occurred after death.


post mortem

The injuries were found to have been caused post mortem.

հետմահու

occurring after death — see also posthumously

по́сле сме́рти (pósle smérti, literally “after death”)

пі́сля сме́рті (píslja smérti, literally “after death”)


post mortem

post mortems (plural)
postmortem (alternative)
post-mortem (alternative)

Nor had the post mortem on Newson's body revealed any illness or other physical condition that might have prevented him from applying the brake, although after four days in the oven-like heat of the wreckage, the body was so badly decomposed as to make any reliable post mortem results unlikely.

2025 February 19, Mike Lewis, “Tragedy at Moorgate”, in RAIL, number 1029, page 59, about the Moorgate tube crash:

An investigation of a corpse to determine the cause of death.

դիահերձում

investigation of a corpse to determine the cause of death; an autopsy


megadeath

PIE word
 *méǵh₂s
From mega- (prefix meaning ‘one million; very large, great’) + death.

affix

One million deaths, especially as a unit of measure for estimating deaths due to nuclear warfare.

megamort

one million deaths, especially as a unit of measure for estimating deaths due to nuclear warfare


morbid

en-adj

morbid (comparative more morbid, superlative most morbid)

more morbid (comparative)
most morbid (superlative)

From Latin morbidus (“diseased”), from morbus (“sickness”), itself from the root of morī (“to die”) or directly from Proto-Indo-European *mer- (“to rub, pound, wear away”).

der

morbid poem

morbid song

Suggesting the horror of death; macabre or ghoulish.


skull and crossbones

en-noun

skull and crossbones (plural skull and crossbones or skulls and crossbones)

skull and crossbones (plural)
skulls and crossbones (plural)
skull-and-crossbones (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-skull and crossbones.wav

In an obscure corner of the town stands a house of extreme antiquity, over the door of which are still to be seen a skull and crossbones.

1832 February, “A Tale of Galway, Ireland”, in Louis Antoine Godey, editor, The Lady’s Book: A Monthly Magazine of Belles-lettres and the Arts. […], Philadelphia, Pa.: L[ouis] A[ntoine] Godey & Co. […], →OCLC, page 95, column 1:

She stood within the chamber, and gazed around her; no signs by which an Inquisitor of old could have detected the Scholar of the Black Arts were visible. No crucibles and caldrons, no brass-bound volumes and ciphered girdles, no skulls and crossbones.

1842, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], chapter VII, in Zanoni. […], volume III, London: Saunders & Otley, […], →OCLC, book the sixth (Superstition Deserting Faith), page 87:

Escorted to the sign of the Skull-and-Cross-Bones, we received the very best entertainment which that royal inn could afford.

1849, Herman Melville, “They Visit the Lords Piko and Hello”, in Mardi: And a Voyage Thither. […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 144:

Mark those bottles, my dear sirs, as housewives do corrosive sublimate or ratsbane,—with a skull and crossbones, and label them "Poison," for the effect of them upon the luckless wight who should taste their contents, would be convulsive, very.

1850 June, “Letter to the Editors”, in E. W. Evans et al., editors, The Yale Literary Magazine: […], volume XV, number VII, New Haven, Conn.: T. J. Stafford [for] A. H. Maltby, →OCLC, page 273:

His own taste combined the gloomy and the grotesque, his clothes and his [book] bindings alike being covered with skulls and crossbones, and spangles to represent tears, with other conventional emblems of sorrow.

1893, Charles Isaac Elton, Mary Augusta Elton, “France: Early Bookmen—Royal Collectors”, in The Great Book-Collectors, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd., page 107:

And this was open rebellion. This was hoisting the skull and cross-bones.

1924 May 24 – July 12, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, “Sunday Night at Mario’s”, in Bill the Conqueror: His Invasion of England in the Springtime, 10th edition, London: Methuen & Co. […], published 1931, →OCLC, § 1, page 254:

Overhead, the black flag with the white skull-and-crossbones symbolizing defiance of radio regulations fluttered limply atop the two-hundred-foot mast mounted on the converted coaster from which they operated.

1969, John Brunner, chapter IX, in Double, Double, London: Gateway, Hachette, published 2011, →ISBN:

When poisons are involved, red skull and crossbones are added.

1973, Richard C. Colton, Edmund S. Ward, Charles H. Wager, Practical Handbook of Industrial Traffic Management, 5th edition, Washington: Traffic Service Corporation, →OCLC, page 579:

The skull and crossbones is, to be sure, a visual sign that communicates a very specific meaning.

1994, William G. Boltz, The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System, New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society, →ISBN, page 16:

On the floor was a big flag whose significance I could not make out. There was a big red cross in the center and around it were two skull and crossbones and two other insignia with crossed torches, crossed scythes, and a smaller cross in the center.

1996, “The Regiment de Tren: Transportation under Fire”, in Cary Nelson, Jefferson Hendricks, editors, Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the Spanish Civil War, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 2003, →ISBN, page 554:

Because when I saw him again, the Bird had two skull-and-crossbones stenciled on his X-ray camera.

1998 April, Michael Flynn, “Friends in High Places”, in David G[eddes] Hartwell, editor, Rogue Star (A Tor Book), New York, N.Y.: Tom Doherty Associates, →ISBN, page 144:

[C]hildren who are not told otherwise may interpret the ubiquitous skull and crossbones pictograph […] to mean "pirate food" […] Parents can also play an important role by teaching their children that the skull and crossbones symbol is sometimes used to indicate poison.

2007, Michael J. Kalsher, Michael S. Wogalter, “Warnings: Hazard Control Methods for Caregivers and Children”, in Rani Lueder, Valerie J. Berg Rice, editors, Ergonomics for Children: Designing Products and Places for Toddlers to Teens, Boca Raton, Fla.: Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, section D (Children and Product Design), page 531:

By the turn of the 18th century, when Captain [John] Cranby espied [Emanuel] Wynn's skull and crossbones, the piracy trade was flourishing and ambitious pirates were becoming increasingly sophisticated in the way they operated.

2011 May 1, Alice Rawsthorn, “Skull and crossbones as branding tool”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-05-10:

These [motorcycle] helmets often resemble World War I Prussian helmets, or are modified half-helmets, usually plain black in color, or adorned with skulls and crossbones, or other intimidating symbols.

2012, William E[dwin] Thompson, “Biker and Motorcyclist Values, Old and New”, in Hogs, Blogs, Leathers and Lattes: The Sociology of Modern American Motorcycling, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, →ISBN, page 60:

It was a quilted leather tote with tiny skulls-and-crossbones inside each diamond; Sirena's style was definitely impossible to miss. But the million-dollar question was: how had this girl snagged it? Everyone online was buzzing about this purse, but no one could get one.

2015, Jen Jones [i.e., Jennifer Lynn Jones], chapter 1, in The New Ashley (Sleepover Girls), North Mankato, Minn.: Capstone Young Readers, →ISBN:

A depiction of a human skull and two crossed femurs (thighbones), a symbol of death traditionally used on the Jolly Roger pirate flag, but now used on chemical containers and other hazardous items as an indicator of warning of toxicity or other life-threatening dangers or risks.


roadkill

roadkill (usually uncountable, plural roadkills)

roadkills (plural)
road kill (alternative)

(chiefly US, automotive) The killing of an animal by a road vehicle.


serial killer

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A person who commits multiple (more than two) murders, especially similar ones with no obvious motive over a period of time with a "cooling-off" period between each murder.


curtains

It's curtains for you!

"What if a bunch of scuba divers nosed about here?" / "Curtains for them, when our side-scan sonar sees them."

(figuratively, in reference to curtains closing at the end of a stage show) An end or death.


sudden death

sudden death (countable and uncountable, plural sudden deaths)

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(countable) Instantaneous, unexpected death not caused by violence or trauma.

Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see sudden, death.


black widow

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Any of several species of venomous and potentially deadly spiders, particularly Latrodectus spp.


killed in action

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There were only some four hundred United States marines who in the heroic and historic defense of Wake Island inflicted such great losses on the enemy. Some of those men were killed in action; and others are now prisoners of war.

1942 January 6, Franklin Roosevelt, 1942 President's Annual Message to Congress:

(chiefly military) The designation for a member of an organization (primarily military) who has died while on duty.


pass on

en-verb

pass on (third-person singular simple present passes on, present participle passing on, simple past and past participle passed on)

passes on (present singular third-person)
passing on (participle present)
passed on (participle past)
passed on (past)

His uncle passed on last year.

A very fine woman, Martha’s mother. She passed on—let’s see—sixteen months ago, next June. No, fifteen months ago. […] She was a very fine old lady, and I was glad to do what I could.

1953, Jim Thompson, “Allen Talbert”, in The Criminal, Berkeley, Calif.: Black Lizard Books, published 1986, →ISBN, page 5:


Davy Jones's locker

There has been much speculation about the origin of this term, but none has been substantiated. See more at Davy Jones' Locker on Wikipedia.

Davy Jones' locker (alternative)
Davy Jones locker (alternative)
Davey Jones's locker (alternative)
Davey Jones' locker (alternative)
Davey Jones locker (alternative)
Davie Jones's locker (alternative)
Davie Jones' locker (alternative)
Davie Jones locker (alternative)
Davy's locker (alternative)
Davey's locker (alternative)
Davie's locker (alternative)

"Damn my eyes," says he, "they are gone to Davy Jones's locker."
NOTE: Partridge erroneously refers to this as from the journal of Richard rather than Nicholas Cresswell.

1774, Nicholas Cresswell, The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774-7:

... are discovered singing a melancholy duet, bewailing the loss of an honest tar, whom they suppose (to use the burthen of the song) "is in Davy Jones's locker."

1781 August, Isaac Kimber, Edward Kimber, “The Summer Theatre”, in The London Magazine, or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, volume 50, page 360:

(nautical, idiomatic) The bottom of the sea, seen as a grave for sailors and the resting-place of anything that goes overboard and is lost.

Davy Jones' Locker#History
en:Davy Jones's Locker


angel of death

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-angel of death.wav

مَلَك الْمَوْت

personification of death in fiction and in art

死神 (しにがみ, shinigami, literally “death kami, death spirit”)

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

A personification of death in fiction, art, mythology, or religion.

An angel in Abrahamic scripture or eschatology that attends to death.

Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.


Azrael

From Latin Azrahel, from Ancient Greek Ἀζαραήλ (Azaraḗl), from Biblical Hebrew עֲזַרְאֵל (ʿăzarʾēl), possibly via Aramaic (compare Classical Syriac ܥܲܙܪܵܐܹܝܠ (ʿazrāʾēl)).

And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring / Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.

1915, Gilbert K[eith] Chesterton, “[War Poems.] Lepanto.”, in Poems, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company, published 1916, →OCLC, page 31:

The angel of death in Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, and in Islam.


expiry

en-noun

expiry (countable and uncountable, plural expiries)

(British, New Zealand, Australia, Canada) Death.


electrocute

en-verb

electrocute (third-person singular simple present electrocutes, present participle electrocuting, simple past and past participle electrocuted)

electrocutes (present singular third-person)
electrocuting (participle present)
electrocuted (participle past)
electrocuted (past)

electrocutar

to cause death from immediate complications resulting from electric shock

уби́ть то́ком

to kill with the electric current, accidentally or deliberately

(transitive, proscribed, informal) To inflict a severe electric shock (not necessarily fatal) upon.

電擊 /电击

to inflict a severe electric shock, not necessarily fatally


at death's door

The minstrel woman who left the Castle yesterday has spread the report everywhere, that the Duke of Rothsay is murdered, or at death's door.

1828 May 15, [Walter Scott], chapter IX, in Chronicles of the Canongate. Second Series. […] (The Fair Maid of Perth), volume III, Edinburgh: […] [Ballantyne and Co.] for Cadell and Co.; London: Simpkin and Marshall, →OCLC, page 235:

One of my Polynesian sailors lay at death's door with blackwater fever.

1913 August, Jack London, chapter XXXII, in John Barleycorn, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC, page 290:

Clearly, a business with $26 billion in cash reserves isn't exactly at death's door.

2008 June 29, Josh Quittner, “Bill Gates: PC Genius, Internet Fool”, in Time:

(idiomatic) About to die; in a life-threatening state of health.


remains

They buried the remains of their longtime friend in the town cemetery.

The victim's remains were one small piece of bone.

The body or any of its matter that are left after a person (or any organism) dies; a corpse.

мәйет

what is left after a person (or any organism) dies; a corpse


pop one's clogs

pop one's clogs (third-person singular simple present pops one's clogs, present participle popping one's clogs, simple past and past participle popped one's clogs)

pops one's clogs (present singular third-person)
popping one's clogs (participle present)
popped one's clogs (participle past)
popped one's clogs (past)

The old man has finally popped his clogs.


near-death experience

en-noun

near-death experience (plural near-death experiences)

near-death experiences (plural)
near death experience (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-near-death experience.wav

Calque of French expérience de mort imminente, coined by Raymond Moody in 1975.

calque

Everybody has the same story of the near-death experience—my entire life flashed in front of me, the white light and all that—but no one really knows it.

1995 November 26, Laura Mansnerus, quoting Timothy Leary, “At Death's Door, the Message Is Tune In, Turn On, Drop In”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

A sensation of detachment from one's body, the presence of a tunnel of light, the apparent viewing of one's own body from on high, and similar manifestations, experienced by people whose heart and brain have temporarily ceased to function.

nærdødsoplevelse

experience by people whose heart and brain have temporarily ceased to function


obit

From Anglo-Norman obit, Middle French obit, and their source, Latin obitus (“going down; death”), from obīre (“to go down, to die”).


mactation

en-noun

mactation (countable and uncountable, plural mactations)

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From Latin mactātiō, from mactō (“I sacrifice, slaughter”).

(archaic) The act of killing a victim for sacrifice.


blood sport

blood sport (countable and uncountable, plural blood sports)

blood sports (plural)
bloodsport (alternative)

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The way she said, “Are you not entertained?”—surely we both knew it was a quote from Gladiator, a movie in which a hero falls from grace, is forced to perform blood sport for the pleasure of spectators, and emerges victorious, having survived humiliation and debasement to soar higher than ever.

2023 December 6, Sam Lansky, “Person of Year 2023 : Taylor Swift”, in Time:

(literally) A sport involving the killing or the shedding of blood of animals.


terminally

en-adv

terminally (comparative more terminally, superlative most terminally)

more terminally (comparative)
most terminally (superlative)

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terminally ill

2009, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, It's Not Me, It's You: Subjective Recollections from a Terminally Optimistic, Chronically Sarcastic, and Occasionally Inebriated Woman:


amicicide

Men who have been the firmest friends, while in each other's company periodically and frequently, have clashed and quarrelled in their attempt to dwell beneath the same roof, and, occupying the same apartments, have been moved to commit amicicide.

1873, Junius Henri Browne, “Women as Idealists”, in The Galaxy, Volume XVI, page 99:


Davy Jones

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Davy Jones.wav

Uncertain. See more at Davy Jones' Locker on Wikipedia.

Davey Jones (alternative)
Davie Jones (alternative)

The pirates made him walk the plank, sent him down to Davy Jones.

He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 18, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:


death mask

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A plaster or similar cast of a person's face after death.


czaricide

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séance

Borrowed from French séance (“sitting, session”).

bor+

[B]ut only too often séances degenerate into pure sorcery or necromancy, attracting all kinds of undeveloped and earth-bound entities.

1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 231:

A ceremony where people try to communicate with the spirits of dead people, usually led by a medium.

seancë spiritizmi

a ceremony where people try to communicate with the spirits

(dated) The sitting of an assembly to discuss a matter.


séance

en-verb

séance (third-person singular simple present séances, present participle séancing, simple past and past participle séanced)

séances (present singular third-person)
séancing (participle present)
séanced (participle past)
séanced (past)
seance (alternative)

To hold a séance (communication with spirits).


necropolis

en-noun

necropolis (plural necropolises or necropoleis or necropoles or necropoli)

necropolises (plural)
necropoleis (plural)
necropoles (plural)
necropoli (plural)
nekropolis (alternative)

Brookwood Cemetery
Deir el-Bahari
London Necropolis Railway
Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut
Theban Necropolis

Borrowed from Koine Greek νεκρόπολις (nekrópolis, “city of the dead, cemetery”) (used to describe part of the city of Alexandria, Egypt), from Ancient Greek νεκρός (nekrós, “dead”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *neḱ- (“to disappear; to perish”)) + πόλις (pólis, “city”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *tpelH- (“city; fortification”)). The English word is analysable as necro- + -polis, and is cognate with French nécropole, German Nekropolis, Late Latin necropolis.
The plural form necropoleis is derived from Ancient Greek νεκροπόλεις (nekropóleis).

der

In Turkey, the tombs, according to the custom of the ancients, are always without the towns; and as each tomb has uſually a large ſtone, and ſome maſonry, they conſtitute what may almoſt be called a ſecond town, which may be named, as formerly at Alexandria, Necropolis, or the city of the dead.

1793, C[onstantin] F[rançois] Volney, “Government of the Mamlouks”, in [anonymous], transl., Travels through Syria and Egypt, in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785. […] In Two Volumes, volume I, Dublin: […] Messrs. White, Byrne, W. Porter, Moore, Dornin, and W[illia]m Jones, →OCLC, section II (The Misery and Famine of Later Years), footnote, page 120:

It was a lovely morning, as I said, and the Turks, who are early risers, were sitting on the graves of their kindred with their veiled wives and children, the marble turbans in that thickly-sown nekropolis less numerous than those of the living, who had come, not to mourn the dead who lay beneath, but to pass a day of idleness and pleasure on the spot endeared by their memories.

1836, [Nathaniel Parker Willis], “The Gipsy of Sardis. Part III.”, in Inklings of Adventure … In Two Volumes, volume II, New York, N.Y., London: Saunders and Otley, […], →OCLC, page 61:

[I]t [Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris] is an overcrowded, shabby, dusty, and ill-kept cemetery: Kensall Green, though incipient, is far more picturesque; and several American necropoleis beat it hollow.

1856, [Martin Farquhar Tupper], Paterfamilias’s Diary of Everybody’s Tour: Belgium and the Rhine, Munich, Switzerland, Milan, Geneva and Paris, London: Thomas Hatchard, […], →OCLC, page 288:

The great main street, which ran from the eastern extremity of the city [of Alexandria, Egypt] to the Necropolis at the western end, a distance of thirty stadia, was thronged already with eager citizens, mostly arrayed in holiday costume, and with an expression of expectation on their animated countenances.

[1875?], Mrs. [J. B.] Webb, chapter I, in Alypius of Tagaste: A Tale of the Early Church, London: Religious Tract Society; […], →OCLC, page 9:

READ, WILLIAM DAVID, [...] Sol-fa teacher, lecturer, and vocal composer. [...] He is interred in the Glasgow Necropolis, where a handsome monument has been erected to his memory by his friends and pupils.

1894, “READ, WILLIAM DAVID”, in David Baptie, editor, Musical Scotland Past and Present: Being a Dictionary of Scottish Musicians from about 1400 till the Present Time: […], Paisley, Renfrewshire: J. and R. Parlane; […], →OCLC; reprinted as Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, New York, N.Y.: Georg Olms, 1972, →ISBN, page 154:

Even at Adam Smith's death Glasgow was a city of less than 50,000, less, that is, than the Kirkcaldy of 1951. [...] The pattern of the old city was simple; let us follow it out. [...] Across the ravine is the necropolis, a mountain of gravestones, with a monument of [John] Knox in the centre.

1956, C[harles] R[yle] Fay, “Glasgow”, in Adam Smith and the Scotland of His Day, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: University Press, →OCLC, page 58:

Queens's Calvary Cemetery was even bigger and busier than Green-Wood. Soon after the Catholic necropolis opened its gates in 1848, one account tallied "fifty burials a day, half of them poor Irish under seven years of age."

2014, Kevin Cook, “Garden Suburb”, in Kitty Genovese: The Murder, the Bystanders, the Crime that Changed America, New York, N.Y., London: W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN:

(chiefly historical, also figuratively) A cemetery; especially a large one in or near a city.

大墓地 (dà mùdì, literally “large cemetery”)


thanatophobia

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shiva

en-noun

shiva (countable and uncountable, plural shivas)

shivas (plural)
shibah (alternative)
shiv'ah (alternative)
shivah (alternative)
shive (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-shiva.wav

From Hebrew שִׁבְעָה (shiv'á, “seven”), referring to the number of days that shiva spans.

Did you know that some parents sit shiva […] for 30 days if their child is discovered to be gay?

1974 February 2, “Jewish Gay Group”, in Gay Community News, volume 1, number 32, page 2:

Seymour: Audrey, quick! We've got to do an emergency [flower] arrangement.
[…]
Mr. Mushnik: The Shivas are our most important funereal account. A big, enormous family, they're dropping off like flies!

1986, Little Shop of Horrors (1986 film)

(Judaism) A weeklong period of formal mourning for a close relative.


miscarriage

miscarriage (countable and uncountable, plural miscarriages)

(medicine) The spontaneous natural termination of a pregnancy, especially before it is viable; the fatal expulsion of a foetus from the womb before term.


agonic

Borrowed from French agonique (“possessing or filled with agony; agonous”), from agonie (“the moment just before death”) + -ique (suffix forming adjectives from nouns) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *-kos (suffix forming adjectives denoting “the characteristic of, typical of, pertaining to”)). Agonie is ultimately derived from Ancient Greek ἀγωνίᾱ (agōníā, “agony, anguish”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eǵ- (“to drive”).

der

A study of the conditions under which agonic invagination of the intestine occurs will not be out of place in considering the etiology of intussusception. Agonic invagination is very much more common in children than adults, the proportion being, according to [Hermann] Nothnagel, one to fifty. [Luther Emmett] Holt says that agonic invagination is met with in 80 per cent. of the post mortems on infants.

1907 July 20, P. L. Hipsley, “The Etiology of Intussusception”, in George E. Rennie, editor, The Australasian Medical Gazette: The Journal of the Australasian Branches of the British Medical Association, volume XXVI, number 7 (number 310 from the start), Sydney, N.S.W.: Published by the New South Wales Branch of the British Medical Association, at 121 Bathurst Street, Sydney, →OCLC, page 339, column 2:

The author is entirely at one with Brockbank that platelets are agonic products of red cells and dismisses the other theories shortly.

1914, The Medical Chronicle: A Monthly Record of the Progress of the Medical Sciences, volume XXVI (series IV), Manchester: Sherratt & Hughes, →OCLC, page 550:

(medicine, obsolete) Occurring shortly before death; agonal.


killing spree

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-killing spree.wav

A number of murders in a short span of time; a rampage.


death row

en-noun

death row (countable and uncountable, plural death rows)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-death row.wav

Reggie Clemons has one last chance to save his life. After 19 years on death row in Missouri for the murder of two young women, he has been granted a final opportunity to persuade a judge that he should be spared execution by lethal injection.

2012 August 21, Ed Pilkington, “Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die?”, in The Guardian:

The section of a prison which houses those inmates who are sentenced to death.


belly-up

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pop off

en-verb

pop off (third-person singular simple present pops off, present participle popping off, simple past and past participle popped off)

pops off (present singular third-person)
popping off (participle present)
popped off (participle past)
popped off (past)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-pop off.wav

When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow’s-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; […]

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 35, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 173:

Dig your own grave, then I'll pop you off!

1923, Margaret J. Winkler, “Felix Strikes It Rich”, in Felix the Cat:


month's mind

months' minds (plural)
month mind (alternative)

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From Middle English monethes mynde under influence from Medieval Latin dies mensis (“day of the month”) and Old English ġemynd, whose principal sense was "memory".

der

(Christianity, now chiefly Ireland and Scotland) A requiem mass or other commemoration of a deceased person held one month after burial.


lethal dose

lethal doses (plural)
as LD (abbreviation)

A lethal dose 50 will cause the death of 50% of a sample of test animals.

The dose of a substance or of radiation likely to cause death (sometimes suffixed with a number).


lethally

en-adv

lethally (comparative more lethally, superlative most lethally)

more lethally (comparative)
most lethally (superlative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-lethally.wav

He was lethally poisoned by the cobra and died a day later of it.

In a lethal manner, in manner which is or will be fatal.


Shoah

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From Hebrew שׁוֹאָה (šōʾā, “catastrophe”).

I never knew him, or any of my other relatives who died in the Shoah. But I would gladly dump every ounce of that gold into the ocean, just to give them a decent burial.

(history) The systematic mass murder of six million Jews perpetrated by Nazi Germany shortly before and during World War II.


parasiticide

/ˌpæɹəˈsɪtɪsaɪd/

Dung beetles dived into delicious organic cowpats left by longhorn cattle that hadn’t been fed wormers and parasiticides

2020 February 25, Christopher de Bellaigue, “The end of farming?”, in The Guardian:


parricide

en-noun

parricide (countable and uncountable, plural parricides)

From Middle French parricide, from Latin parricīda and parricīdium, of uncertain origin, perhaps from pār (“equal”).

The new accusation brought by Urban against Manfred of murdering his sister-in-law's embassador – it may be observed that, tacitly, he acquits him of parricide, fratricide, and nepoticide – requires a little explanation.

1856, Mrs. William Busk, Mediæval Popes, Emperors, Kings, and Crusaders: Or, Germany, Italy and Palestine, from A.D. 1125 to A.D. 1268, volume IV, London: Hookham and Sons, →OCLC, page 294:

The production of Schiller’s ‘Don Carlos’ was long forbidden, because Don Carlos loved his stepmother; in ‘The Robbers,’ the Father was turned into an uncle, and a stupendous effect was produced by the cry of “Unclecide,” substituted for Parricide.

1861 July 27, The Athenæum: Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts, number 1761, London, page 116, column 1:

The killing of a relative, especially a parent.

The killing of a ruler, or other authority figure; treason.


dead as a doorknob

Possibly from a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the expression dead as a doornail. See usage notes below.

I tried the flashlight, but the battery was as dead as a doorknob.

I found the mouse who lived in our wall, lying on his back with his feet in the air—as dead as a doorknob.

(simile) Entirely, unquestionably or certainly dead.


death toll

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Food, clothing, bedding, and fire, were supplied in sufficient proportions to maintain life and health; and the three years of severe suffering passed over the cotton districts without any sensible increase of disease, and without increasing the frequency of the death toll.

1866, John Watts, The Facts of the Cotton Famine, page 232:

Fascinated by the fact that the death toll of this singular storm was the fifth highest on record as regards overall effects/death tolls for a natural disaster in the United States in the 20th century […]

2011, Angela Mason, Death Rides the Sky: The Story of the 1925 Tri-State Tornado:

The number of dead as a result of a war, natural disaster or other incident.

死亡人數 /死亡人数

the number of dead as a result of a war, natural disaster or other incident

मृतकों की संख्या (mŕtkõ kī saṅkhyā, literally “death statistics”)

спи́сок уби́тых m (spísok ubítyx, literally “list of the killed”)


slaying

slaying (countable and uncountable, plural slayings)

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The slaying of the civil rights activist brought a storm of protest.

Slay not your children, fearing a fall to poverty, We shall provide for them and for you. Lo! the slaying of them is great sin.

1930, Marmaduke Pickthall, transl., The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, surah 17, verse 31:

Killing, especially the murder of a human.

घात

killing, especially the murder of a human


mortification

mortification (countable and uncountable, plural mortifications)

honor

antonym(s) of “a sensation of extreme shame”

/ˌmɔːtɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/

From Middle French mortification, from Old French, from Latin mortificatio.

And then there's the fever and the mortification—if it took bad ways he'd quickly be gone.

1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 5”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:

(medicine) The death of part of the body.


mortify

en-verb

mortify (third-person singular simple present mortifies, present participle mortifying, simple past and past participle mortified)

mortifies (present singular third-person)
mortifying (participle present)
mortified (participle past)
mortified (past)

From Anglo-Norman mortifier, Middle French mortifier, from Late Latin mortificō (“cause death”), from Latin mors (“death”) + -ficō (“-fy”).

The second Spring after transplanting, purge them of all superfluous shoots and scions, reserving only the most towardly for the future stem; this to be done yearly, as long as they continue in the nursery; and if of the principal stem so left, the frost mortifie any part, cut it off [...]

1664, John Evelyn, “Of the Mulberry”, in Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber; republished as Sylva: Or A Discourse of Forest Trees, volume 1, London: Arthur Doubleday, 1908, page 205:


necrotic

en-adj

necrotic (comparative more necrotic, superlative most necrotic)

more necrotic (comparative)
most necrotic (superlative)

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(pathology) Of or pertaining to necrosis, particularly of tissue.


fatally

en-adv

fatally (comparative more fatally, superlative most fatally)

more fatally (comparative)
most fatally (superlative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-fatally.wav

Witness our too much memorable shame
When Cressy battle fatally was struck,
And all our princes captiv'd by the hand
Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;

1599, William Shakespeare, The Life of King Henry V:

He told Peace that he did not believe his statement that he had fired the pistol merely to frighten the constable; had not Robinson guarded his head with his arm he would have been wounded fatally, and Peace condemned to death.

1918, H. B. Irving, A Book of Remarkable Criminals:

A 22-year-old man has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years for fatally stabbing 22-year-old Tashan Daniel in an unprovoked attack at Hillingdon Underground station on September 24 2019.

2020 September 9, “Network News: Man jailed for Hillingdon murder”, in Rail, page 25:


rodenticide

en-noun

rodenticide (countable and uncountable, plural rodenticides)

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Since this type of control program tends to reduce the population before it spreads over large areas, it will likely result in the use of less rodenticide in the area.

1983, Terrell P. Salmon, Robert E. Lickliter, “Comparisons Between Vertebrate Pest Control Materials: Essential Considerations”, in Dale E. Kaukeinen, editor, Vertebrate Pest Control and Management Materials: Fourth Symposium, American Society for Testing and Materials, →LCCN, page 13:

Any toxic substance used to kill rodent pests.


mortuary

/ˈmɔɹt͡ʃəˌwɛɹi/

/ˈmɔːt͡ʃʊəɹi/

/ˈmɔːt͡ʃwəɹi/

From Middle English mortuary, from Anglo-Norman mortuarie (“gift to a parish priest from a deceased parishioner”), from Medieval Latin mortuārium (“receptacle for the dead; mortuary”), neuter form of mortuārius (“of or pertaining to the dead”), from Latin mortuus, perfect passive participle of morior (“to die”).

der

Of or relating to death or a funeral; funereal.


leave for dead

en-verb

leave for dead (third-person singular simple present leaves for dead, present participle leaving for dead, simple past and past participle left for dead)

leaves for dead (present singular third-person)
leaving for dead (participle present)
left for dead (participle past)
left for dead (past)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-leave for dead.wav

He stood in the middle of a narrow part of the road, stopped the horse, and struck Fyot with a heavy cudgel, leaving him for dead in the ditch.

1835, Anne Laura Thorold, Letters from Brussels, in the summer of 1835:

The Writer having received two wounds, is left for dead on the field

1851, Personal Adventures of an Austrian Officer in the Hungarian War of 1848 and 1849:

When Steele rides after them, they shoot him and leave him for dead in the desert.

2001, R. Phillip Loy, Westerns and American Culture, 1930-1955:

(transitive) To abandon a person or other living creature that is injured or otherwise incapacitated, assuming that the death of the one abandoned will soon follow.


cash in

cash in (third-person singular simple present cashes in, present participle cashing in, simple past and past participle cashed in)

cashes in (present singular third-person)
cashing in (participle present)
cashed in (participle past)
cashed in (past)

He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess; / And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."[…

1907, Robert Service, “The Cremation of Sam McGee”, in The Spell of The Yukon and Other Verses:

Well, it all ended up, I lost my privileges for two weeks. But someday before I cash in, I hope to make it in the straw.

1974, Charles Bukowski, “Purple as an Iris”, in Erections, ejaculations, exhibitions and general tales of ordinary madness, page 414:


stoning

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The stonings came as something of a surprise, in that Iranian officials had said they had suspended that method of execution.

2009 January 14, Nazila Fathi, “Iran Says U.S. Helped Finance Overthrow Plot”, in New York Times:

lapidation: punishment by throwing stones, usually resulting in death


martyrology

martyrologies (plural)
Mart. (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-martyrology.wav

From martyr + -ology or from Latin martyrologium.

վկայաբանություն

Roman Catholicism: a calendar of saints' days, typically with biographical information

The study of martyrs and martyrdom; the names and stories of martyrs, particularly

(Roman Catholicism) Synonym of hagiography, a story of a saint's life and death.


asphyxiation

en-noun

asphyxiation (countable and uncountable, plural asphyxiations)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-asphyxiation.wav


death wish

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-death wish.wav

From death + wish. Calque of German Todeswunsch.

Does Trump suffer from some kind of political death wish? If so, we must hope his fall comes quickly. It is hard to think of any precedent for such a calamitous display of insensitivity, historical ignorance and uncomprehending political stupidity.

2017 August 20, “The Observer view on Donald Trump’s presidency”, in The Observer:

Wait, Kris! What the HELL was that!??!?! Why would NOELLE?? Ask ME?? To do HOMEWORK?? With HER?!?? Deathwish much? Does she WANNA fail?

2021 September 17, Toby Fox, Deltarune, Windows, level/area: Chapter 2:

"I reiterate: outside is death." Brenda squeezed her hand. "You won't make it far by yourself."

2023 September 24, HarryBlank, “Working Wonders”, in SCP Foundation, archived from the original on 2024-05-25:

(psychology, often sarcastic) A desire, especially subconscious, for the death of oneself or of someone else.

تَمَنِي اَلْمَوْت

desire for the death of oneself or of someone else


bactericide

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-bactericide.wav

Any substance that kills bacteria, especially one that is otherwise harmless.


bactericidal

bactericidals (plural)
bacteriacidal (alternative)
bacteriocidal (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-bactericidal.wav


bactericidin

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-bactericidin.wav

Any antibody that, together with a complement, can kill bacteria.


brain death

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-brain death.wav

Coined by the Harvard physician Henry K. Beecher in the historical context of the Sixties counterculture and life extension technology of the late twentieth century.

(medicine) An irreversible loss of brain function and cessation of brain activity.

breindood

irreversible cessation of brain activity


widow-maker

widow-makers (plural)
widow maker (alternative)
widowmaker (alternative)

From widow + maker. For sense 4, compare German Witwenmacher.

O, it grieves my soul, / That I must draw this metal from my side / To be a widow-maker!

c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii]:

What is a woman that you forsake her, / And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, / To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

1906, Rudyard Kipling, Harp Song of the Dane Women:

Finally, jobs that are 'widow-makers' should be rethought and restructured. In the heyday of the great sailing ships, around 1850, just before the coming of steam, every shipping company had a widow-maker on its hands once in a while. ... One typical 'widow-maker' has been the job of international vice-president in the large American company.

1973, Peter F. Drucker, Management: tasks, responsibilities, practices, published 1999, page 316:

(idiomatic) Something which or someone who takes a person's life, particularly men; a lethal hazard that affects mostly men or is specific to a primarily male trade.

enkemager

something which or someone who takes the lives of men


lose the number of one's mess

en-verb

lose the number of one's mess (third-person singular simple present loses the number of one's mess, present participle losing the number of one's mess, simple past and past participle lost the number of one's mess)

loses the number of one's mess (present singular third-person)
losing the number of one's mess (participle present)
lost the number of one's mess (participle past)
lost the number of one's mess (past)

"What do you think we come to sea for? If we can take a man-of-war of our own size she's worth half a dozen merchant craft, though, to be sure, some of us may lose the number of our mess; but we all know that, and make no count of it."

1870, W.H.G. Kingston, From Powder Monkey to Admiral:

Shore folk think sailors are heartless, and that when a poor chap is lost overboard, they only say that "So-and-so has lost the number of his mess!" and, after having an auction over his kit in the fo'c's'le, then dismiss him from their memory!

"And then before the mast, there was poor John Proby, who lost the number of his mess two days out of Callao."

1993, Patrick O'Brian, The wine-dark sea:

(nautical, idiomatic) To die, to perish.


necrobiosis

en-noun

necrobiosis (countable and uncountable, plural necrobioses)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-necrobiosis.wav

(pathology) The normal death of cells or tissues because of age-related changes.


big sleep

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-big sleep.wav

Apparently coined by novelist Raymond Chandler, author of The Big Sleep (1939).

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that.

1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin, published 2011, page 250:

Before I sink into the big sleep / I want to hear / The scream of the butterfly

1967, “When the Music’s Over”, in Strange Days, performed by The Doors:

(idiomatic, euphemistic, almost always preceded by the) Death.

ikiuni

type of sleep used as euphemism for death


mortally

en-adv

mortally (comparative more mortally, superlative most mortally)

more mortally (comparative)
most mortally (superlative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-mortally.wav

From Middle English mortally, equivalent to mortal + -ly.

Sir Philip Sidney, soldier, courtier, statesman and poet, was born at Penshurst in 1554. He won imperishable fame 32 years later at the Battle of Zutphen in Holland when, mortally wounded, he refused a drink of water and passed his flask to a wounded soldier, with the words: 'Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.'

1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 313:

Fatally; in such a way as to cause death.


shinigami

/ˌʃɪn.ɪˈɡɑːmi/

Borrowing from Japanese 死に神 (shinigami).

(Japanese mythology) A deity and/or personification of death.


kingdom come

en-noun

kingdom come (countable and uncountable, plural kingdoms come or kingdom comes)

kingdoms come (plural)
kingdom comes (plural)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-kingdom come.wav

From the phrase “Thy kingdom come” from the Lord’s Prayer which is recorded in Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4 in the Bible: see, for example, Matthew 6:10 in the King James Version (spelling modernized): “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, in earth, as it is in heaven.” By these sentences, Jesus seeks the establishment of the rule of God the Father over the Earth in the future.

оня свят

place that one will go to after one's death — see also afterlife

(uncountable, colloquial) The place that one will go to after one's death; the afterlife.

(figuratively) Death; also, a state of complete annihilation.


death sentence

Having the Huntington's gene is a death sentence.

(figurative) Anything that spells death.


drop like flies

en-verb

drop like flies (third-person singular simple present drops like flies, present participle dropping like flies, simple past and past participle dropped like flies)

drops like flies (present singular third-person)
dropping like flies (participle present)
dropped like flies (participle past)
dropped like flies (past)
drop off like flies (alternative)
die like flies (alternative)

Seymour: Audrey, quick! We've got to do an emergency [flower] arrangement.
[…]
Mr. Mushnik: The Shivas are our most important funereal account. A big, enormous family, they're dropping off like flies!

1986, Little Shop of Horrors (1986 film)

Hit 'em with a left, a left, and a right / Got 'em dropping like flies with the stars in their eyes

2017, Stray From The Path, “Good Night Alt-Right”:

(simile, of members of a group, especially soldiers) To die en masse, one after the other.

simile; especially soldiers; simile; especially soldiers


deathly

en-adj

deathly (comparative deathlier or more deathly, superlative deathliest or most deathly)

deathlier (comparative)
more deathly (comparative)
deathliest (superlative)
most deathly (superlative)

From Middle English dethlich, from Old English dēaþlīċ, equivalent to death + -ly.


mariticide

From Latin maritus (“married, husband”) + -cide, from caedere (“to kill”).

The act of killing one's spouse, especially the murder of a husband by his wife.


dead as a doornail

From Middle English ded as dore-nail.
One of the earliest usages in English is in William Langland's poem Piers Plowman A. i. 161 (late 14th century) "Fey withouten fait is febelore þen nouȝt, And ded as a dore-nayl", though it is unlikely this is Langland's invention. It also appears in the English William of Palerne l. 628 "For but ich haue bote of mi bale‥I am ded as dore-nail" and in the alliterative debate poem The Parlement of the Thre Ages "Dede als a dore-nayle doune was he fallen" 65. Both of these texts are of uncertain date, and may predate Langland's usage.
One plausible explanation is that doors were built using only wood boards and hand-forged nails: the nails were long enough to dead nail the (vertical) wooden panels and (horizontal) stretcher boards securely together, so they would not easily pull apart. This was done by pounding the protruding point of the nail over and down into the wood. A nail that was bent in this fashion (and thus not easily pulled out) was said to be "dead", thus dead as a doornail.

I picked up the phone, but the line was dead as a doornail.

We finally found John's cat run over in the next road. He was as dead as a doornail.

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

1843 December 19, Charles Dickens, “Stave I. Marley’s Ghost.”, in A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, pages 1–2:

(simile) Unquestionably dead. Used for both inanimate objects and once living beings.


Russian roulette

From roulette, a game of chance involving a revolving wheel. The first description is apparently in "The Fatalist," an 1840 short story by Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov.

(figurative) Any activity, especially a needless one, that carries a high risk of death or disaster.


fratricidal

fratricidal (comparative more fratricidal, superlative most fratricidal)

more fratricidal (comparative)
most fratricidal (superlative)

Taizong's failure fooled no one. Indeed, one of Taizong's own sons may well have been unhinged by his father's obvious fratricidal and nepoticidal actions. These personal considerations directly affected Taizong's policy decisions, and thus warrant some discussion.

2008, Peter Lorge, “The Great Ditch of China and the Song-Liao Border”, in Don J. Wyatt, editor, Battlefronts Real and Imagined: War, Border, and Identity in the Chinese Middle Period, New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, pages 59–74 at 67:

At the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which commemorates the president who urged a fratricidal nation to go forward “with malice toward none, with charity toward all,” the Olipa family debated what’s happened to leadership in America.

2023 March 31, Christa Case Bryant, Henry Gass, Story Hinckley, Sophie Hills, “Sobering moment: Americans reflect on Trump indictment”, in The Christian Science Monitor:


living dead

This “living dead” industry has been written off time and time again, yet it continues to clamber back to its feet and lumber blindly onward.

Venture's investment in Black Hawk could turn out to be a complete failure (black hole), barely surviving (living dead), or wildly successful (venture utopia).

2014, J. Chris Leach, Ronald W. Melicher, Entrepreneurial Finance, page 423:

Existing in stasis, without meaningful activity or development.


meet one's maker

en-verb

meet one's maker (third-person singular simple present meets one's maker, present participle meeting one's maker, simple past and past participle met one's maker)

meets one's maker (present singular third-person)
meeting one's maker (participle present)
met one's maker (participle past)
met one's maker (past)

In various religions, when a person dies, they go to a supernatural place like heaven where they may meet their creator deity.

On the gallows high he has met his Maker...Your victim waits for you to meet your Maker

1871, Unknown (Execution ballad), “Execution of Frederick Baker.”, in Curiosities of Street Literature, Comprising "cocks," Or "catch Pennies", page 205:

He didn't die for a half-hour after that; nor did he speak again—aloud; but just a few seconds before he went to meet his Maker, his lips moved in a faint whisper.

1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:

This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late parrot! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies!

1969 December 7, Monty Python, “Full Frontal Nudity, Dead Parrot sketch”, in Monty Python's Flying Circus, spoken by Mr Praline (John Cleese):

(idiomatic, euphemistic) To die or to pass into the afterlife.


death penalty

en-noun

the death penalty (plural death penalties)

the death penalty (canonical)
death penalties (plural)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-death penalty.wav

And if you would like one more fact about this worthy, he was responsible for an Act on the statute book abolishing the death penalty for cattle rustling.

2021 September 22, Stephen Roberts, “The writings on the wall...”, in RAIL, number 940, page 71:

Joe Biden deserves the death penalty and Jonald Trump bad.

2024 June 4, very tall bart, 0:09 from the start, in [YTP] Jordan Peterson confesses, spoken by Joe Biden (Joe Biden):

(law) A punishment in which the offender is put to death by the state.

dënim me vdekje

state punishment of death — see also capital punishment

महादण्द m (mahādaṇda, literally “the greatest punishment”)


necrolatry

The practice of worshipping or revering the dead.


necrological

en-adj

necrological (comparative more necrological, superlative most necrological)

more necrological (comparative)
most necrological (superlative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-necrological.wav


necrose

en-verb

necrose (third-person singular simple present necroses, present participle necrosing, simple past and past participle necrosed)

necroses (present singular third-person)
necrosing (participle present)
necrosed (participle past)
necrosed (past)

(intransitive, pathology) To become necrotic.


body bag

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-body bag.wav

A non-porous bag designed to contain a human body, used for the storage and transport of corpses.


to death

bleed to death

freeze to death

beat to death

There was doubt and bewilderment about what had actually happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and the uncertainty was compounded two days later when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot to death while in the custody of the Dallas police.

1971, Lyndon Johnson, “"I feel like I have already been here a year"”, in The Vantage Point, Holt, Reinhart & Winston, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 18–19:

(literally) Until death occurs; so as to cause or result in death.


direct maternal death

en-noun

direct maternal death (plural direct maternal deaths)

A maternal death resulting from a complication of the pregnancy or delivery, or their management.


indirect maternal death

indirect maternal death (plural indirect maternal deaths)

A pregnancy-related death in a female patient with a preexisting or newly developed health problem.