perish

perish

Perish means to die, but it suggests a slow, gradual, nonviolent death. Starving to death is perishing. Getting hit by a bus is just plain getting killed.

Perish is the kind of word you can imagine being spoken by a helpless princess in a fairy tale or any other damsel in distress––"If I am not rescued soon by my valiant knight," she might say, "I shall perish if I'm left alone up here in this tower to starve."

Definitions of perish

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

“The children perished in the fire”

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, pop off, snuff it

: 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

Antonyms:: be born
come into existence through birth

Types:: show 9 types...; hide 9 types...; 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; strangle
die from strangulation

Type of:: change state, turn
undergo a transformation or a change of position or action

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

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