Talk:death

RFC discussion: September 2012
Hey wiktionary staff how are you all doing?

I must say that the tarot cards are absolutly nothing to do with death, spiritually or phsyically. This website is supposed to conceptualize truth. The real truth is tarot cards are absolutly nothing to do with death, they were created for the purpose of the teachings of mysticism, for recieving divine or other worldly messages, or prophecies ect. This has nothing to do with death. Some super orthodox christians think that tarot cards are demonic and therefore we all know that in christian mythology anything demonic leads to hell or death. But the real truth is I myself have experienced many beautiful forms of positive, divine enlightenment through tarot cards, i've experienced beautiful prophecies through them and almost all of them have come true and I myself am christian. So i see this as an extream injustice to catigorize such a beautiful practice in such a negitive way. If wiktionary really represents the definition of truth, you will remove "tarot card" as a definition of death, bacause this may discourage others from such a beautiful practice that causes no harm, and absolutly not death!

Thank you for your time :)


 * It meant that "Death" (the reaper) is one particular tarot card. But I've removed it because it's not a sense of the word "death" and should be at capital "Death" if anywhere. Equinox ◑ 13:41, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Missing sense: "a deadly plague"?
Chambers 1908 has this sense, but I haven't heard it used this way on its own: only in e.g. the Black Death. Anyone else? Equinox ◑ 20:19, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Male gender for personfication
I miss an indication which pronoun goes with the personification of death. Although my non-native English is good enough to enjoy Lawrence Sterne, I don't feel confident enough to make the change myself. Tristram Shandy, Volume III (in 4 volume version from project Gutenberg) chap IX: "who know what death is, and what havock and destruction he can make".

In my native German we have "Sensenmann" (skythe man) for the death. In my local Catalan it is female "la mort". I would have guessed (and know from Monty Python) the English death is germanic male, not Latin female. Tim2007viatge (talk) 12:58, 24 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Interesting. I think the western personification of death is usually a skeleton wearing a cloak/cape and holding a scythe. I'm not sure if the gender is really implied. How would we prove this? Equinox ◑ 13:01, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Www Macmillan doesn't have Death as personification and www Marriam Webster doesn't comment on the gender. Wictionary "Death (personification)": "Death is most often personified in male form,[citation needed]" :-( Tim2007viatge (talk) 13:34, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Correction. Wikipedia (not Wiktionary) "Death (personification)": "Death is most often personified in male form,[citation needed]" :-( Tim2007viatge (talk) 13:36, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Wiktionary "ship" comments on gender. For Death, if we had quotes with "she" and "it", too, and would include them in the article, this would give an idea. Maybe "she" will only be found in translations from romanic or slavic languages? Tim2007viatge (talk) 13:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

In old English it was male. Wiktionary: dēaþ m (nominative plural dēaþas) Tim2007viatge (talk) 13:49, 24 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Masculine gender isn't the same thing as a male person. For example in German a girl is das (neuter gender) Maedchen, even though she is a female human. Equinox ◑ 14:17, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

The "-chen" in "das Mädchen" is a diminutive suffix applied to a root akin to "die Maid" and "die Magd" (both meaning "the maid"). It turns the gender into neutral, like "der Kuss"(the kiss), "das Küsschen"(the little kiss, with "ch" pronounced like in "Mädchen") or "die Katze"(the cat), "das Kätzchen"(the kitten, the little cat). Grown up in German, I imagine cats as female, panthers as male (how are pronouns in Rilke's poem "der Panther" translated into English?) unless the specific nown for the other sex is used (Kater for Tom-cat, Pantherin for she-panther). I would expect that speakers of old English imagined Death as a man, according to his grammatical gender. I would feel disproven if somebody showed me a female representation of "la morte"(Death, female noun) - not "il ángelo della morte"(angel, male noun) - by an Italian painter or sculptor, or similar in another romance language. I agree, however, that the male gender of old English death doesn't imply that "he" is the only possible pronoun for Death in modern English. There are words with different gender in Castillian than Catalan: el valle / la vall (the valley), el diente / la dent (the tooth), so gender in one of them must have changed over time if it was unique in the Latin root. Tim2007viatge (talk) 15:27, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I consider the anthropomorphized figure of death to be customarily male. Not a firm rule. See the song "Anyway" from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway: "They say she comes on a pale horse, but I'm sure I hear a train." And the Fates of Greek mythology were female. If not anthropomorphizing "it" would probably work. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 15:44, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I would expect a historical evolution from the male noun in Old English to more liberty in the choice of pronouns like in your 1970ies quote. So, adding quotes from different times and translated from different original languages would be interesting. We have 2 so far in this discussion. I failed to find a pronoun for Death in the bible. In a website listing Bible verses about death (for mourners, not for scholars, so probably incomplete), the only personification I found was 1.Corinthians 15:16 "the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death". It has male θάνατος in the old Greek version NA28 and female mors in Latin VXX. I have no clue about Hebrew. However, the pronouns there (in the next verse, 15:27), seem to refer to god, not to death. Tim2007viatge (talk) 16:19, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I updated the article with 3 quotes and comment on "he". The link I put to Broadway Lamb doesn't work. Tim2007viatge (talk) 08:53, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Link repaired (Broadway Lamb) Tim2007viatge (talk) 09:00, 25 June 2020 (UTC)