perish

[per-ish]

verb (used without object)

1. to die or be destroyed through violence, privation, etc..

   to perish in an earthquake.

   Synonyms: expire

2. to pass away or disappear.

   an age of elegance that has forever perished.

   Synonyms: vanish, molder, rot, shrivel, wither
   Antonyms: appear

3. to suffer destruction or ruin.

   His valuable paintings perished in the fire.

4. to suffer spiritual death.

   Save us, lest we perish.

perish

/ ˈpɛrɪʃ /

verb

1. to be destroyed or die, esp in an untimely way

2. (tr sometimes followed by with or from) to cause to suffer

   we were perished with cold

3. to rot

   leather perishes if exposed to bad weather

4. may it never be or happen thus

noun

1. informal,  to die or come near to dying of thirst or starvation

Other Word Forms

• perishless adjective
• perishment noun
• unperished adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of perish¹

1200–50; Middle English perissen < Old French periss-, long stem of perir < Latin perīre to perish, literally, go through, spend fully, equivalent to per- per- + īre to go

Word History and Origins

Origin of perish¹

C13: from Old French périr, from Latin perīre to pass away entirely, from _per- (away) + īre to go

Idioms and Phrases

Idioms

1. perish the thought, may it never happen: used facetiously or as an afterthought of foreboding.

More idioms and phrases containing perish

• publish or perish

Synonym Study

See die ¹.

Example Sentences

“I would rather perish than betray the secrets entrusted to me.… With every heartbeat, with every day that passes, I swear to serve the Party, the homeland, and the Soviet People.”

Read more on Literature

Huge numbers perished in the Holocaust, yet even immediately after the war Yiddish was the pre-eminent language among the world's Jews.

Read more on Barron's

The global scientific consensus is that most coral reefs would perish at warming of 1.5C above preindustrial levels -- a threshold just years away.

Read more on Barron's

Or patients who perished from treatable infections for lack of antibiotics and proper dressings for wounds.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

A strength of “The Gales of November” is the way Mr. Bacon weaves in the stories of the crewmen who perished when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• cease 
• crumble 
• disappear 
• disintegrate 
• pass away 
• rot 
• succumb 
• vanish 
• wither