pre-dead

Adjective

pre-dead (not comparable)

1. Not yet dead.
   • As always Mullen speaks for the dead, the pre-dead, and the after-dead:2012, Claudia Rankine, Lisa Sewell, Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century, page 214
   1. Dying; moribund; terminally ill.
      • Garbage removal in and around private pre-dead rats initially low.1969, Pesticides - Volume 3, page 48
      • The anchors that hold him to earth pull loose, a common phenomenon among the pre-dead.1999, Joe Jackson, William F. Burke (Jr.), Dead Run
   2. Doomed to die soon;
      • he had enough time to marry and rear children, but that given statistics and his lengthy family history, life beyond 45 seemed unlikely. After 40, he began to view his life as "pre-dead."1994, John S. Rolland, Families, Illness, and Disability
      • I wanted to produce a straightforward, unsentimental view of a place that has been shrouded in mystery, to offer the human face of these men, the pre-dead.1997, Texas death row, page 7
   3. Alive
      • Then the man told Mamet what he fed the anaconda: "pre-dead chickens."1984, New York - Volume 17, page 41
      • That statement presupposes that everyone in the world agrees with the nonsensical "pre-born human." Why not say "pre-dead human" since we are all going to die at some point?2001, Scott Stein, C P Kaiser, When Falls the Coliseum, page 91