Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Toward death.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adverb Toward death.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb toward death
  • adjective which leads toward death

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word deathward.

Examples

  • The former tendency is what I call the deathward -- deathward for all else but itself; and the Christ is the lifeward, life for all else but itself.

    The New Theology 1911

  • These two tendencies we may describe as the deathward and the lifeward respectively.

    The New Theology 1911

  • At the center of Posthumous Keats is the journey deathward.

    Keats's Afterlife Ricks, Christopher 2009

  • Or as in Achilles: his eyes meeting Penthesilea's, recognizing suddenly of the Amazonian queen's great beauty, the warrior falls in love with her but the deathward, plunging tip of his sword lies presently one angstrom away from her throat.

    Archive 2005-11-01 2005

  • Or as in Achilles: his eyes meeting Penthesilea's, recognizing suddenly of the Amazonian queen's great beauty, the warrior falls in love with her but the deathward, plunging tip of his sword lies presently one angstrom away from her throat.

    WTC Memorial Mock-Up, or: The ¼ Garden 2005

  • Nay, said Merlin, not so, for I could save myself an I would; and thou art more near thy death than I am, for thou goest to the deathward, an God be not thy friend.

    Le Morte d'Arthur: Sir Thomas Malory's book of King Arthur and of his noble knights of the Round table 2003

  • In such struggles life spends itself fast; an inward wound does not carry one deathward more surely than this worst wound of the soul.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 23, September, 1859 Various

  • Would my heart and life flow onward -- deathward -- through this dream of THEE! '

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 Various

  • So translated by Floyd Dell: "O ye deathward-going tribes of man, what do your lives mean except that they go to nothingness?"

    A Book of Prefaces 1918

  • The words are not very satisfactory because the deathward tendency masquerades as the lifeward tendency, and the lifeward tendency, before fruition, looks like the deathward one.

    The New Theology 1911

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Yea, but what then? albeit all this were thus,

    And soul smote soul and left it ruinous,

    And love led love as eyeless men lead men,

    Through chance by chance to deathward

    —Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse

    Actually an instance of the circumfix to ...-ward.

    July 15, 2008