Perish

How to spell perish

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce perish

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does perish mean?

1. verbTo die, especially in a sudden, violent, or large-scale way.
2. verbOf a material such as rubber, leather, or food, to rot or lose strength through age or exposure.

Perish in a sentence

• Delicate seedlings often perish in a hard frost.

• Left out in the sun, the rubber seals will quickly perish.

• Thousands could perish if relief supplies fail to arrive.

• The old elastic bands will perish if stored near a heater.

Where does perish come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb perire, meaning 'to pass away, to come to nothing, to be destroyed'. It was built from the prefix per-, here carrying the force of 'away' or 'completely, to destruction', joined to ire, the ordinary Latin verb meaning 'to go'. So the literal sense was something like 'to go away utterly', which softened over time into our modern idea of dying or ceasing to exist. English took the word through Old French perir around the year 1200, and the older infinitive shape is why we keep the smooth -ish ending rather than anything harder to spell. The same ire 'to go' root quietly survives in relatives such as 'exit' (literally 'he goes out') and 'transient', which makes the family resemblance easy to remember.

How the word is built

• per- (away, completely, to destruction)
• -ish (verb ending, from Latin ire, to go)