death
noun
Simple meaning
The permanent end of all life functions in an organism or part of an organism.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dehthIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdɛθ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The permanent end of all life functions in an organism or part of an organism
“The animal died a painful death.”
often capitalized
The personification of death as a (usually male) hooded figure with a scythe; the Grim Reaper.
“Death walked the streets of the plague-bound city.”
The cessation of life and all associated processes; the end of an organism's existence as an entity independent from its environment and its return to an inert, nonliving state.
Execution (in the judicial sense).
figurativelyespecially followed by of-phrase
A cause of great stress, exhaustion, embarrassment, or another negative condition (for someone).
The personification of death, often a skeleton with a scythe, and one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The permanent end of all life functions in an organism or part of an organism
Used this way, death is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a scientific use: it names something precisely within a field of study, so it appears in research and teaching more than in conversation.
“The animal died a painful death.”
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Academic writing
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Nearby words
- decease , more formal, and heavier in everyday conversation
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
How It’s Used
The word’s distinct uses, one example each.
Personificationnoun
“Death walked the streets of the plague-bound city.”
Permanentnoun
“The animal died a painful death.”
More ways to use death
- “Death walked the streets of the plague-bound city.”noun
- “The animal died a painful death.”noun
- “Her death came as a terrible shock.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A concentration camp where prisoners are likely to die or be killed.
Extremely poisonous usually white fungus with a prominent cup-shaped base.
An instrument of execution by electrocution.
Instrument of execution consisting of a sealed chamber into which poison gas is introduced.
Extremely poisonous usually white fungus with a prominent cup-shaped base.
A tax on the estate of the deceased person.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A human skull (or a representation of a human skull) used as a symbol of death.
Bores through wood making a ticking sound popularly thought to presage death.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.