Talk:die

Other senses

In Elizabethan English, "to die" meant to have an orgasm. If you want, put it in here. Bibliomaniac15 04:14, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence or quotations? --Dvortygirl 04:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it was that way in French, too "a little death" Rklawton 02:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

died also means a sound that fades away:

1. • 1883: Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island – At last the tapping recommenced, and, to our indescribable joy and gratitude, died slowly away again until it ceased to be heard. Rklawton 02:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Dutch usage note

The Dutch usage note is correct, but I think the example sentence could be chosen better. Anyone? henne 09:15, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Thought up a better one, but it can still be optimised. henne 14:38, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

"die for lack of"

We have this quotation:

Less than three days later, Johnson lapsed into a coma in his jail cell and died for lack of insulin.

as an example of "die" followed by "for", but I think it's a misleading example. Technically, yes, the word "die" is followed by the word "for", but I think the choice of "for" is conditioned here by the use of "lack", rather than the use of "die". I think "for" here simply means "because of" or "due to"; that's not a common use of it any more, but you still see "for lack of", "for want of", and so on. Am I right?
—Ruakh_TALK 20:10, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely; it has nothing to do with the verb per se. – Krun 20:54, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Deletion debate

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"To cause the death of a player character while controlling it." The usex is "I can't go to level four because I always die against the boss of level three." "Die" is clearly not the remarkable part of that sentence; it's "I" which is being used to mean "the thing I am controlling, my character, my avatar", but I'm not sure if even that merits a sense at [[I]]. - -sche (discuss) 19:06, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't feel that this is a separate sense either, but the way I read that sentence, the "I" who can't go to level four is the player, while the "I" who dies is the in-game character. The in-game character would not know about game levels. Equinox ◑ 21:04, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Delete this. Also if we were to add such a sense to I, we'd need to add it to you, we, they (etc.) same would apply to French je, tu (etc.) unless I'm badly wrong. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:10, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Also, compare utterances of (say) a player of Tomb Raider, like "I just fell off a cliff" (new sense at (deprecated template usage) fall off?); "I just picked up some ammo" (new sense at (deprecated template usage) pick up?). die is not unique. Delete. Equinox ◑ 22:13, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I think this is also related to an airplane pilot saying "I keep getting hit by birds." even though it is the airplane that is getting hit by birds. The only difference in the video game sense is that the player is not physically located inside the game character. It's just a more figurative use of pronouns (doesn't have to be "I"). --WikiTiki89 (talk) 06:21, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Delete. Aside from the other problems, there's confusion about the difference between semantics and syntax: "die" is an intransitive verb, and thus can't have a transitive verb like "cause" substitute for it. Although "dying" has the result of the player character dying because of the actions of the player, grammatically there's no object involved. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with that analysis. An intransitive verb can certainly be swapped with a verb phrase headed by a transitive verb; for example, "to converse" means "to make conversation", even though "converse" is intransitive and "make" is transitive. For that matter, "to kill" can be used intransitively to mean "to kill someone", even though the latter phrase uses it transitively. —Ruakh_TALK 20:22, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

True. The definition is still wrong, though, in that when "I die" in a video, it's usually not because I "caused" my character to die (except in a blame-the-victim-for-the-rape interpretation of causality), it's usually because some baddie killed me against my will. - -sche (discuss) 23:20, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

You still caused it by sucking at playing the game :) Equinox ◑ 23:23, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

@-sche Thank you for rescuing my point from my attempt to explain it... Chuck Entz (talk) 01:04, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

There is no more causation here than there is in real life. "The soldier died in the war." Does that mean he caused himself to die because by sucking at fighting in a war? --WikiTiki89 (talk) 08:58, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Deleted in this edit. - -sche (discuss) 09:13, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Ive just restored something similar to what was deleted in 2012. I think it was deleted because it wasn't a different definition of "die". I agree that it isnt; saying "I died" instead of "My player died" is just an example of metonymy and not a separate definition. However I believe what Im talking about still merits inclusion because it's a different usage of the verb even if the syntactical meaning is the same as definition #1.

In normal conversation, one would not normally say "he died to a knife" or even "he died to a knife wound" but in video game commentary from what Ive seen this is a common usage. At least among the games where a player might "die" hundreds or thousands of times in a single playthrough and then go on to win the game. More to the point, it's a transitive usage of a normally intransitive verb. Lollipop (talk) 22:57, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

To be clear, he died to a knife isn't transitive in the sense of having a direct object; knife isn't the direct object of die, but the object of the preposition to. It is transitive in the sense of having an obligatory argument, though, and it is true that die doesn't usually have an obligatory argument. I think this sense should perhaps be moved to die to. — Eru·tuon 23:04, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, but "to" can be replaced with other words, like "died from the boss / turret", "died by the boss / turret". (All these phrases are rare, but all are found online. "Died to" even seems to get just enough Usenet hits to meet the attestation part of CFI.) So maybe "die" is the best place to handle this.

However, when one uses those other prepositions, it seems more apparent that the sense is indistinct from the non-video-game-related sense/use of "die". For example, the two hits I see for "died due to the turret" are a video game forum and a US government paper on a real-world incident. That makes me wonder if this is best handled as a distinct sense of "die", or as the usual sense of "die" with usage-note-worthy context-based un/acceptability of certain prepositions. I'm not sure.

Some of the other senses are more tightly bound to "to", btw. Is "died to sin" ever used with another preposition? I don't know. - -sche (discuss) 04:09, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

To necro this thread again as Lollipop did a few years ago, I just moved the "video game" sense up to sit with the other examples of "die" being followed by various prepositions indicating cause and other things. I added a citation showing that it's not limited to video games, and it doesn't seem to be (as it was previously defined) a different sense, but just a different preposition, since next to "died to a turret" one can find "died from a turret", which in turn is obviously just the same sense as in "died from a heart attack". - -sche (discuss) 19:54, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Ainu

According to Batchelor's 1926 An Ainu-English-Japanese Dictionary, English die translates as ライ (rai). Batchelor also gives this example sentence at イサム (isam "not to be", "it is not"): Rai wa isam, "he has died." (page 193). The particle ワ (wa) with verbs marks something like present participle, or as Batchelor puts it, "The particle itself indicates the English 'ing' and may well be rendered by 'and.'")

If my analysis is correct, イサム is not literally die, though I wouldn't be surprised to hear it used figuratively, rather like "He's not with us anymore." Even disregarding my analysis, though, ライ is Ainu for die according to Batchelor. Cnilep (talk) 07:30, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

English usage note

The usage note is misleading and potentially irrelevant. It seems to indicate that "am/are/is/was/were dead" previously formed a part of the regular paradigm for the verb "die" in place of "have/has/had died". This isn't true. As long as "die" can be considered to have been a verb in English, it has always been possible to use it's past participle with a form of "have" to express a perfect aspect. In fact, contrary to what the note says, the perfect aspect in the past tense was routinely expressed this way in the KJV bible i.e. "had died". Furthermore, "am/are/is/was/were dead" is still a very common figure of speech, much more so than equivalent phrases with "died" (increased use of "has/have died" probably owes most to news reports and headlines). However, this parallel construction is irrelevant to the usage of "die" because the adjective "dead" has been in common use since Old English, even before the Norse loan "die" became the usual verb for this meaning. So, the fact that "dead" has been and remains a very common adjective to describe something that has died does not mean that "have/has/had died" was or is an unusual way to express the perfect aspect of "die", only that, when it comes to being dead, the perfect aspect is usually implicit.184.241.47.56 20:50, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I've removed it. It was added in this diff. - -sche (discuss) 21:01, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

What the anonymous person wrote above is not completely correct. In the King James Bible, the expression "have died" is only used once, in John 11:37 (where it is an infinitive). Nowhere is there any "hath died" or "hast died". There are quite a few instances of "had died", but I think they are all second subjunctive rather than pluperfect, such as "Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt" (Numbers 16:3). But there are many instances of "is dead" used instead of "hath died". The best example is Galatians 2:21, where Paul says "I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead [ἀπέθανεν] in vain." (The word "come" here is subjunctive, being in an "if" clause.) Obviously Paul did not think that Christ was still dead! The word being translated means "died" (or "would have died", a contrary-to-fact apodosis). So I am putting a note to this effect back into the article. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 14:57, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

a hero('s death)

Hi, could sb. please add what grammatical unit the phrase 'a hero('s death)' is in this type of structure. Thanks in advance. --Backinstadiums (talk) 23:45, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

How does that relate to "die"? "A hero", "death", and "a hero's death" are all noun phrases. Equinox ◑ 00:13, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

"facts of the blackest die"

In Tom Jones: "he hath carried his friendship to this man to a blameable length, by too long concealing facts of the blackest die", i.e. bad or scandalous truths. But what kind of "die" is this? Could it be an obsolete form of dye (which makes sense with "black"), or is it the cutting device, in metaphorical reference to the "shape" of the situation? Equinox ◑ 14:11, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Robert Hunter's old dictionary gives "crime of the blackest dye" as an example of a sense "quality, character, grain" of "dye" (colour/stain). And "of the blackest dye" and "of the worst dye" are more common than "[crimes, knaves, etc] of the blackest die" and "[caitiffs, etc] of the worst die", though as you note either spelling could make sense, referencing colour/stain or cut/shape. But the presence of a third variant "of the deepest dye" (mentioned by the Random House dictionary) / "of a deep dye" suggests it is from "dye" — although even there, "the deepest die" sees a lot of use. - -sche (discuss) 18:18, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

 Done We seem to have it now. I've added the Tom Jones cite (it's not unusual!). Equinox ◑ 23:03, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

RFV discussion: May–July 2017

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die

Rfv-sense "Synonym of laugh". SpinningSpark 18:03, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

The definition has long since been reworded. RFV-resolved Kiwima (talk) 23:33, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

The verb "die" doesn't occur in the passive

According to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, page 77, The verb "die" doesn't occur in the passive, but what about its transitive meaning? --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:11, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that sense (at least) can be passive. See google books:"death was died by", where the hits are an amusing mix of books saying "*a death was died by doesn't exist" and books in which "a death was died by" nonetheless exists, like "a small and voluntary death was died by Socrates". - -sche (discuss) 19:43, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

RFV discussion: February–March 2020

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die

"(intransitive) To be utterly cut off by family or friends, as if dead. The day our sister eloped, she died to our mother." No hits in GBooks for "she died to our mother" or even anything relevant for "she died to me". I've heard of someone being dead to somebody, but not "dying to somebody". Is it real? Equinox ◑ 08:17, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

This seems like it should exist, but it's hard to find. All the hits I see at google books:"died to our" seem to be the "become indifferent; cease to be subject" sense or chance co-occurrences of the words, ditto "she died to her", "I died to my", and "died to (his|her|my) (father|mother)", of which the only hit that might be this sense is Bloom. Strickland seems(?) to also use the sense we want, whereas this grammatically similar Lipner cite seems to use the literal sense, just in a counterfactual(?). The sense doesn't seem to be in the old OED. Smith and Cherryh and maybe Winer seem like they may be the right sense, though. What do you think? - -sche (discuss) 09:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The usual expression is "to be dead to someone". —Mahāgaja · talk 11:06, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@-sche Thanks for looking. I don't really see why it "should" exist: you can be invisible to someone without having "disappeared to them". So, the challenged definition is: "To be utterly cut off by family or friends, as if dead." My feelings about your links (in order of appearance):

• 2009 Bloom: "Esther ... has 'died' to her mother, in order to live again" (note scare quotes!): this seems to be a psychoanalytical statement: someone has done something akin to death in order to overcome some trauma etc. Not relevant to the challenged sense.
• 1854 Strickland: "When Edward died all men died to me." Presumably this means "he was the only man I could care about" so again not relevant to the challenged sense.
• 2009 Lipner: "you hadn't died to me. In my mind only you remained my wife, no one else could take your place." Presumably someone did die but remained "alive" in their partner's mind, preventing future relationships: again not relevant to challenged sense.
• 2011, Winer: "He's died to me so many times since the last time I heard from him [...] and I've died to myself so many times because of it." Not very clear but "died to myself" suggests the friends/family sense doesn't apply...?
• 2015, Cherryh: "There was a point I let you die to me, son of mine. I told myself you were dead, so I could think about your father." THIS ONE ALONE SEEMS RELEVANT.
• 2018 Smith: "I know you're dying [...] You've been dying to me, a little bit, day by day, as long as I can remember. And when I started doing some digging and discovered that Niklas existed, well, you died more that day." Apparently someone is becoming detached or disliked; again not relevant.

Equinox ◑ 15:04, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Ah, I think our definition at die is simply insufficient, and should parallel or incorporate more of the wording from the coordinate sense of dead (which is defined as "so hated that they are absolutely ignored", without explicitly limitation to or mention of being ignored specifically by family/friends). I'm going to revise the sense, at which point it seems to me that the 2018 Smith citation probably applies — I mean, suppose it continued its statements of "you've been drying to me, a little bit, day by day [...] you died more that day" by additionally saying "you became dead to me": that would be the "so hated that they are absolutely ignored" sense of dead, wouldn't it? so I think the sense of die (which is clearly intended to be coordinate) is meant, too. - -sche (discuss) 16:45, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I tried searching for "died to"+"dead to", but most of what I found is a religious sense of dead that we were missing, parallel to the "become indifferent to (sin, etc)" sense of die. I did find one citation (2003 Carman) talking about one person dying to and being dead to another person, but it might just be a counterfactual (as it also involves telling people the person is dead when you know they're not). - -sche (discuss) 17:19, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Yeah I think family/friends is possibly a common context but probably an unhelpful red herring. Good luck! Equinox ◑ 17:20, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Ok, I found one clear cite of this (2017 Hoornstra), a mother yelling at her son that when he ran away, he died to her and became dead to her. - -sche (discuss) 17:51, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Aha, using the string "died to (me|him|her|etc) (the|that) day" [that someone did something], I managed to find several more citations. It could be argued that many or all are just metaphorical (compare saying something "died that day as far as [X] was concerned"), but the same can be said of the corresponding sense of dead and of many other senses of die and dead, so I don't see that as necessarily grounds for removal. It could also be argued that all the citations I added have the form "die to [someone]", but I think it still breaks down as [die] [to someone] rather than [die to], just like "it seemed to me" is "[it seemed] [to me]" not "it [seemed to] [me]". The definition may also need further revision. But I think the sheer existence of a verb die with a meaning roughly coordinate to be dead to is cited. - -sche (discuss) 19:18, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

RFV-passed Kiwima (talk) 20:05, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

from vs of

A person can die of an illness, or die in an earthquake or a fire. In careful usage, die from is reserved for indirect causes of death, e.g., refusal to leave a flooded area or failure to wear a seat belt: The study found that people with the lowest cholesterol levels were more likely to die from tragic causes, such as car crashes or suicide. 
Microsoft® Encarta® 2009

Is this inherited from the meanings of the prepositions themselves? --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:18, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

German die

we need to add that it can also mean "she" (sie) (like said on German wiki) LICA98 (talk) 17:03, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Afrikaans die

The afrikaans pronoun section of afrikaans does is not seem quite right. While "die" can be used as a pronoun, it always used as "dié", and even then it isn't used for personal pronouns(he, she, they)Ananinunenon (talk) 12:47, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

nonviolent video games

To my surprise, I found an old video game review in which the writer talks about the player dying even though it is a nonviolent game in which no reasonable person could mistake the game-over screen for depicting actual death. I've added the cite now. This came up a few months ago in this thread, so I'm posting here to indicate that I've changed my mind. Finding two more cites will be difficult, though, as there's no convenient way to filter out the other senses. All I can think of is to search for nonviolent games. —Soap— 17:07, 28 June 2023 (UTC)