Welcome to Question.com Skip directly to: Search Box, Site Navigation, Content.

 
 

Death

n.
  1. The cessation of all vital phenomena without capability of resuscitation, either in animals or plants.
  2. Total privation or loss; extinction; cessation; as, the death of memory.
  3. Manner of dying; act or state of passing from life.
  4. Cause of loss of life.
  5. Personified: The destroyer of life, -- conventionally represented as a skeleton with a scythe.
  6. Danger of death.
  7. Murder; murderous character.
  8. (Theol.) Loss of spiritual life.
  9. Anything so dreadful as to be like death.
    10. Black death .
    See Black death, in the Vocabulary.
    Civil death ,
    the separation of a man from civil society, or the debarring him from the enjoyment of civil rights, as by banishment, attainder, abjuration of the realm, entering a monastery, etc.
    Death adder
    1. A kind of viper found in South Africa (Acanthophis tortor); -- so called from the virulence of its venom.
    2. A venomous Australian snake of the family Elapidæ, of several species, as the Hoplocephalus superbus and Acanthopis antarctica.
    Death bell ,
    a bell that announces a death.
    Death candle ,
    a light like that of a candle, viewed by the superstitious as presaging death.
    Death damp ,
    a cold sweat at the coming on of death.
    Death fire ,
    a kind of ignis fatuus supposed to forebode death.
    Death grapple ,
    a grapple or struggle for life.
    Death in life ,
    a condition but little removed from death; a living death.
    Death rate ,
    the relation or ratio of the number of deaths to the population.
    Death rattle ,
    a rattling or gurgling in the throat of a dying person.
    Death's door ,
    the boundary of life; the partition dividing life from death.
    Death stroke ,
    a stroke causing death.
    Death throe ,
    the spasm of death.
    Death token ,
    the signal of approaching death.
    Death warrant
    1. That which puts an end to expectation, hope, or joy.
    Death wound
    1. A fatal wound or injury.
    Spiritual death (Scripture),
    the corruption and perversion of the soul by sin, with the loss of the favor of God.
    The gates of death ,
    the grave.
    The second death ,
    condemnation to eternal separation from God.
    To be the death of ,
    to be the cause of death to; to make die.