Thanatos
Americannoun
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an ancient Greek personification of death.
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Psychoanalysis. the death instinct, especially as expressed in violent aggression.
noun
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Roman counterpart: Mors. the Greek personification of death: son of Nyx, goddess of night
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the name chosen by Freud to represent a universal death instinct Compare Eros
Other Word Forms
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Sitting cross-legged in my friend’s attic, I tore through those pages, ricocheting between Thanatos and Eros.
From Washington Post ● May 26, 2020
The study about Thanatos was published last month in the Cretaceous Research journal.
From BBC ● Feb. 11, 2020
Not that that the arrows that staves off Thanatos are it feels like it does.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 30, 2018
And, of course, as with Donne, when you start to look a little closer, you find that the amorous and the ascetic, the profane and the sacred, Eros and Thanatos have been intimately bound throughout.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 19, 2016
“We have to find the Doors of Death anyway. Thanatos told us we’d find both answers in Rome—like, the original Rome. That’s on the way to Greece, right?”
From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
