instadeath

English

Etymology

From insta- +‎ death.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɪnstəˌdɛθ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

instadeath (countable and uncountable, plural instadeaths)

1. (video games, slang) instant death [from 1990s]
   • 1994 February 11, Jacob Bara-Skowronek, “Re: Space Gods (was Re: Demographics)”, in alt.games.torg‎^[1] (Usenet):

     It may seem rather harsh, but if one's going to play a cyborg (or the equivalent), the benefits of almost unlimited cyberware counterbalance the risk of dying in pure zones (or InstaDeath due to transformation).

   • 1995, Robert J Chverchko, “Re: Napalm LRM's”, in rec.games.mecha‎^[2] (Usenet):

     It's way too powerful, the point with the inferno SRM-2 was that it needed to close into a range where the infantry might have a chance of firing back before suffering instadeath.

   • "Dylan O'Donnell", "Re: New spoiler - instadeath"[3], rec.games.roguelike.nethack Usenet

     It's still only on the 5-turn timer if you're hit by a monster-thrown egg, though, as opposed to the instadeath from "elementary physics" if you throw one upwards yourself.

   • 2007, "Mark Mackey", "Lost char due to bug in Crawl SS 0.7"[4], rec.games.roguelike.misc Usenet

     One of the nice things added to Crawl in the dc400 beta days was the removal of typo instadeaths: back in the bad days accidentally moving onto a lava or deep water square was effectively an instadeath.

See also

• instakill
• permadeath