Primary
''decease'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260718130800-00-⌔
decease - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Noun
decease (countable and uncountable, plural deceases)
- (formal) Death, departure from life.
- ✤ Synonyms: demise, quietus; see also Thesaurus: death
- ✤ So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination: then you were
Yourself again after yourself’s decease […]1- ✤ I thought about my predecessor, who had died of drink and smoke; and I could have wished he had been so good as to live, and not bother me with his decease.2
Verb
decease (third-person singular simple present deceases, present participle deceasing, simple past and past participle deceased)
- (now rare) To die.
- ✤ Synonyms: expire, perish; see also Thesaurus: die
- ✤ After which usurped victorie, he presently deceased: and partly through the excessive joy he thereby conceived.3
- (formal, transitive) To cause to die.
Etymology
From Old French deces (Modern French décès), from Latin dēcessus (“departure”).
Pronunciation
- IPA: /dɪˈsiːs/
- Audio (Southern England): 🔊
- Rhymes: -iːs
Printed 2026-07-18.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 13”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC: ↩
1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC: ↩
1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 17, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC: ↩
Secondary
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