death anxiety

[ dethang-zahy-i-tee ]

nounPsychiatry.

a morbid awareness of mortality, together with an extreme fear of one’s own death, the process of dying, the afterlife, or the death of a loved one: There wasn’t a single negative event that triggered my existential death anxiety—just the intrusive, obsessive thought of not existing.The data may show a negative correlation of death anxiety and religiosity.

Origin of death anxiety

¹

First recorded in 1960–65

Also called thanatophobia .

Words Nearby death anxiety

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use death anxiety in a sentence

The religious narrative resolved our death anxiety through faith in an afterlife.
On Transhumanism and Why Technology Is Our Silicon Nervous System | Jason Silva | April 26, 2014 | THE DAILY BEAST

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