Language

This section plays home to several different web contributions that relate to the way that language affects how we talk about and death, in the most basic sense of defining the terms we must use and in the more cognitive sense of language shaping our conceptions of the process of dying, death, and the dead. Three groups contributed to a glossary, which draws on terminology from medical, professional, and mythological realms. Another team compiled a lengthy list of quotes related to live, death, and mortality more generally. A third team gathered together an impressive list of the many ways we talk about death without using straightforward terms; their list enumerates many euphemisms for death and the dead. Finally, another team compiled a list of epithets and tombstone inscriptions in order to capture the language we use to immortalize our dead.

Web Contributions

Epithets

Euphemisms

Glossary

Quotes