Library / English Dictionary

DECEASE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

The event of dying or departure from life

Example:

upon your decease the capital will pass to your grandchildren

Synonyms:

death; decease; expiry

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Hypernyms ("decease" is a kind of...):

alteration; change; modification (an event that occurs when something passes from one state or phase to another)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "decease"):

fatality; human death (a death resulting from an accident or a disaster)

martyrdom (death that is imposed because of the person's adherence of a religious faith or cause)

megadeath (the death of a million people)

departure; exit; expiration; going; loss; passing; release (euphemistic expressions for death)

wrongful death (a death that results from a wrongful act or from negligence; a death that can serve as the basis for a civil action for damages on behalf of the dead person's family or heirs)

Instance hyponyms:

Crucifixion (the death of Jesus by crucifixion)

Derivation:

decease (pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life

Example:

The old guy kicked the bucket at the age of 102

Synonyms:

buy the farm; cash in one's chips; choke; conk; croak; decease; die; drop dead; exit; expire; give-up the ghost; go; kick the bucket; pass; pass away; perish; pop off; snuff it

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "decease" is one way to...):

change state; turn (undergo a transformation or a change of position or action)

Verb group:

break; break down; conk out; die; fail; give out; give way; go; go bad (stop operating or functioning)

die (suffer or face the pain of death)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "decease"):

abort (cease development, die, and be aborted)

asphyxiate; stifle; suffocate (be asphyxiated; die from lack of oxygen)

buy it; pip out (be killed or die)

drown (die from being submerged in water, getting water into the lungs, and asphyxiating)

predecease (die before; die earlier than)

famish; starve (die of food deprivation)

fall (die, as in battle or in a hunt)

succumb; yield (be fatally overwhelmed)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s

Derivation:

decease (the event of dying or departure from life)

decedent (someone who is no longer alive)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Our readers will remember that the deceased gentleman was found stabbed in his room, and that some suspicion attached to his valet, but that the case broke down on an alibi.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Ushabti figurines (small carved figurines) were often placed with the deceased in ancient Egyptian tombs to help with responsibilities in the afterlife.

(Egypt Announces Discovery of 3,500-Year-Old Luxor Tomb, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

But no energetic source or remnant of a deceased O-type star, such as a neutron star, is apparent within the center of this ring.

(Herschel sees budding stars and a giant, strange ring, NASA)

The researchers looked at brains of deceased people with Alzheimer's disease and found evidence of Porphyromonas gingivalis (Pg), a type of bacteria that's associated with gum disease.

(New Link Found between Alzheimer's & Gum Disease Bacteria, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Scientists have found evidence of the infectious agent of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in the eyes of deceased CJD patients.

(Eyes of CJD patients show evidence of prions, National Institutes of Health)

For by her predeceasing her daughter the latter would have come into possession of the property, and, even had she only survived her mother by five minutes, her property would, in case there were no will—and a will was a practical impossibility in such a case—have been treated at her decease as under intestacy.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

No one could dispute her right to come; the house was her husband's from the moment of his father's decease; but the indelicacy of her conduct was so much the greater, and to a woman in Mrs. Dashwood's situation, with only common feelings, must have been highly unpleasing;—but in HER mind there was a sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic, that any offence of the kind, by whomsoever given or received, was to her a source of immovable disgust.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

For about three years I heard little of him; but on the decease of the incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, he applied to me again by letter for the presentation.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his friend and benefactor Edward Hyde, but that in case of Dr. Jekyll’s disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months, the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll’s shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor’s household.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since the decease of the old one.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)