Word.ws English Dictionary

join the choir invisible

join the choir invisible verb: to die.

Verb

join the choir invisible (third-person singular simple present joins the choir invisible, present participle joining the choir invisible, simple past and past participle joined the choir invisible)

  1. (euphemistic, humorous, intransitive) To die.
    • This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to see its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies. It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an...1969 December 7, “Full Frontal Nudity”, in Monty Python's Flying Circus, season 1, episode 8, spoken by Mr Praline (John Cleese), Dead Parrot sketch
    • Made me wonder whether I should invest in a portable MRI unit to monitor birds about to join the choir invisible for any signs of brain activity.2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 30

Forms of join the choir invisible

third-person singular presentjoins the choir invisible
present participlejoining the choir invisible
past participlejoined the choir invisible
pastjoined the choir invisible

Origin of join the choir invisible

From a poem by George Eliot, "O May I Join the Choir Invisible" (1867), further popularized by the "Dead Parrot" sketch (1969) from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Questions about join the choir invisible

What does join the choir invisible mean?
Join the choir invisible means to die.
What part of speech is join the choir invisible?
Join the choir invisible is a verb.
What is the past tense of join the choir invisible?
The past tense of join the choir invisible is joined the choir invisible.

Words near join the choir invisible in the dictionary

  1. join in
  2. join issue
  3. join out
  4. join point
  5. join points
  6. join the choir invisible
  7. join the club
  8. join the dots
  9. join the majority
  10. join tree
  11. join trees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: join the choir invisible (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-join the choir invisible.wav.

Cite this entry: “join the choir invisible.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/join_the_choir_invisible. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.