death

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of dying; termination of life.
2. n. The state of being dead.
3. n. The cause of dying: Drugs were the death of him.
4. n. A manner of dying: a heroine's death.
5. n. A personification of the destroyer of life, usually represented as a skeleton holding a scythe.
6. n. Bloodshed; murder.
7. n. Execution.
8. n. Law Civil death.
9. n. The termination or extinction of something: the death of imperialism.
10. idiom. at death's door Near to death; gravely ill or injured.
11. idiom. be the death of To distress or irritate to an intolerable degree.
12. idiom. death on Opposed to or strict about: Our boss is death on casual dressing.
13. idiom. put to death To execute.
14. idiom. to death To an intolerable degree; extremely: worried to death.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Cessation of life; that state of a being, animal or vegetable, in which there is a total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions, In the abstract.
2. n. Actual.
3. n. Figurative or poetical.
4. n. [In poetry and poetical prose death is often personified.
5. n. A general mortality; a deadly plague; a fatal epidemic: as, the black death (which see, below).
6. n. The cessation of life in a particular part of an organic body, as a bone.
7. n. A skeleton, or the figure of a skeleton, as the symbol of mortality: as, a death's head.
8. n. A cause, agent, or instrument of death.
9. n. Imminent deadly peril.
10. n. A capital offense; an offense punishable with death.
11. n. The state or place of the dead.
12. n. The mode or manner of dying.
13. n. Something as dreadful as death.
14. n. In Scripture: The reverse of spiritual life; the mere physical and sensuous life, without any activity of the spiritual or religious nature.
15. n. After physical death, the final doom of those who have lived and died in separation from God and the divine life.
16. n. A slaughtering or killing.
17. n. To be passionately fond of; have a great liking or capacity for: as, he was death on the sherry.
18. n. Mortally; to death.
19. n. Synonyms Death, Decease, Demise. See decease.

Wiktionary

1. n. 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.
2. n. often capitalized The personification of death as a hooded figure with a scythe; the Grim Reaper.
3. n. The final part of something.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The cessation of all vital phenomena without capability of resuscitation, either in animals or plants.
2. n. Total privation or loss; extinction; cessation.
3. n. Manner of dying; act or state of passing from life.
4. n. Cause of loss of life.
5. n. Personified: The destroyer of life, -- conventionally represented as a skeleton with a scythe.
6. n. Danger of death.
7. n. Murder; murderous character.
8. n. (Theol.) Loss of spiritual life.
9. n. Anything so dreadful as to be like death.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the time when something ends
2. n. a final state
3. n. the absence of life or state of being dead
4. n. the personification of death
5. n. the permanent end of all life functions in an organism or part of an organism
6. n. the event of dying or departure from life
7. n. the time at which life ends; continuing until dead
8. n. the act of killing