Sunday, April 18, 2010

Improve your GRE Vocab:Words similar to Death

  1. Annihilate (v): destroy utterly, defeat utterly
  2. Cadaver (n): a corpse

  3. Cadaverous (adj): resembling a corpse in being very pale, thin, or bony
  4. Carnage (n): the killing of a large number of people
  5. Carrion (n): rotting flesh of a dead body.
  6. Catacombs (n): a series of underground tunnels used for burying dead people, esp. in ancient Rome.
  7. Cenotaph (n): a monument to someone buried elsewhere, especially a war memorial.
  8. Decapitate (v): cut off the head of.
  9. Decimate (v): kill or destroy a large proportion of; drastically reduce strength of
                        : (in ancient Rome) kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers) as a punishment for the mutiny of the whole group
  10. Demise (n): the end or failure of something; a person’s death
  11. Defunct (adj): no longer existing or functioning
  12. Dirge (n): a lament for the dead, especially one forming part of a funeral rite
                  : a mournful song, piece of music, or sound
    Use: the funeral dirge stirred us to tears
  13. Epitaph (n): words written in memory of a person who has died, especially as an inscription on a tombstone.
  14. Euthanasia (n): the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable disease or in an irreversible coma
  15. Holocaust (n): destruction or slaughter on a mass scale; destruction by fire
  16. Moribund (n): at the point of death; in terminal decline; lacking vigor
  17. Massacre (n): an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people
                     (v): deliberately and violently kill (a large number of people).
  18. Manslaughter (n): the crime of killing a human being without malice
  19. Mausoleum (n): a building, especially a large and stately one, housing a tomb or tombs.

  20. Obsequies (P noun): funeral rites
  21. Pyre (n): a heap of combustible material, especially one for burning a corpse as part of a funeral ceremony.
  22. Requiem(n): a mass for the repose of the souls of the dead
                      : a musical composition setting parts of such a mass
  23. Regicide (n): the killing of a king; a person who does this.
  24. Succumb (v): fail to resist (pressure, temptation, etc.)
                        : die from the effect of a disease or injury
  25. Sepulchre (n): a small room or monument cut in rock or built in stone, in which a dead person is laid or buried.