Death

How to spell death

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce death

What does death mean?

1. nounThe permanent end of life of a person, animal, or other living thing.

Death in a sentence

• The family gathered to mark the first anniversary of his death.

• The report listed the cause of death as heart failure.

Where does death come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English deaþ, the native Germanic noun for the end of life, and it traces back to a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form dauthuz, shared with Old Norse dauði, Dutch dood and German Tod. That form was built on the same root that gives us the verb 'to die', combined with the abstract suffix that also stands behind words like 'birth' and 'growth', so death literally names the state of having died. The spelling once carried the runic letter thorn (þ) for the 'th' sound; when that letter fell out of English printing it was replaced by the two-letter 'th' we use today. Because it descends straight from Old English rather than being borrowed from Latin or French, death has kept its short, irregular vowel pairing 'ea' that sounds like a short 'e'. That mismatch between the 'ea' spelling and the plain /eh/ vowel is the only real trap in an otherwise very common word.

How the word is built

• dea- (from Old English deaþ, related to the verb 'die')
• -th (noun-forming suffix marking a state or condition)