PERISH

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does perish mean? 

• PERISH (verb)
  The verb PERISH has 1 sense:

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

  Familiarity information: PERISH used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERISH (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they perish    ... he / she / it perishes   
Past simple: perished   
Past participle: perished   
-ing form: perishing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

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

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

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

Context example:

The old guy kicked the bucket at the age of 102

Hypernyms (to "perish" 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 "perish"):

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

 Context examples 

He now sat down again very much out of breath, gasping at his pipe as if it contained a supply of that necessary, without which he must perish.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But endure it he must, or perish, and the life that was in him had no desire to perish out.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

You shall not die! You, my playfellow, my companion, my sister, perish on the scaffold! No! No!

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Before the long hour and a half of prayers and Bible-reading was over, I felt ready to perish with cold.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

But that is gone; and we must so work, that other poor souls perish not, whilst we can save.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It were sin, thought I, that my secret should perish with me.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I could only judge that all had perished, and my heart smote me sorely that I had not been there to perish with them.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

When the unexpected does happen, however, and when it is of sufficiently grave import, the unfit perish.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

He was the figure that stood forth representative of the whole miserable mass of weaklings and inefficients who perished according to biological law on the ragged confines of life.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

According to the Cheetah Conservation Fund, about 85% of an estimated 1,200 trafficked cheetah cubs have died within the past ten years, perishing en route.

(Around 7,100 cheetahs remain, say experts, Wikinews)