death certificate

American  

noun

death certificates plural

1. a certificate signed by a doctor, giving pertinent identifying information, as age and sex, about a deceased person and certifying the time, place, and cause of death.

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death certificate British  

noun

1. a legal document issued by a qualified medical practitioner certifying the death of a person and stating the cause if known

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• death certificates
  plural

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

death certificate

"If you've got a death certificate with that on it, surely there's enough proof?"

From BBC ● Jul. 21, 2026

Subscriptions to all the streaming services, from Apple TV to Netflix, will continue to remain live until the bank receives her death certificate and finally freezes her account.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 15, 2026

"She's been identified, they already gave me the death certificate," said a distraught Silva, 37.

From Barron's ● Jun. 29, 2026

The office of Armstrong, who said he never met Hsieh and yet was named a co-executor for Hsieh’s estate in the surprise will, received another befuddling document: a death certificate of Singh’s grandfather.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 29, 2026

The cause of her death, not revealed in the note or in her obituary in the Daily Press, was entered on her death certificate as “dementia praecox.”

From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly