Word.ws English Dictionary

thanatolatry

thanatolatry noun: the worship of death.

Noun

thanatolatry (uncountable)

  1. The worship of death.
    • They confuse Christianity with a thanatolatry and a dolorolatry, a worship of death and suffering.2000, William F. May, The Physician's Covenant: Images of the Healer in Medical Ethics (Medical), Westminster John Knox Press
    • What is going on here? Has not thanatolatry won the day—and the life? We must make an implied distinction between death as extermination, the stinging death of sin claiming worship dominative, demonic death, and death as, in McGill's words, “communicating expediture.”2013, Arthur C. McGill, Dying Unto Life: Arthur C. McGill on New God, New Death, New Life (Religion), Wipf and Stock Publishers

Examples of thanatolatry in a sentence

  • This is thanatolatry, martyropathology or nihilism: when an entire society orients itself in this direction, that society is becoming suicidal.2006, Laurent Murawiec, “Deterring Those Who Are Already Dead?”, in Hudson Institute:
  • There is the negative thanatolatry of resisting death at all cost and so bowing before death's domination, before death as extermination.1984, David Cain, “Cambridge University Press”, in Cambridge:
  • In effect, this ancient pagan belief converts death-anxiety into “thanatolatry”, a belief in “death potlatch” by means of which death is thought to mystically replenish life.2012, Kirby Farrell, “Eschatological Landscape”, in Research Gate, Brill:

Origin of thanatolatry

From thanato- + -latry.

Questions about thanatolatry

What does thanatolatry mean?
Thanatolatry means the worship of death.
How do you use thanatolatry in a sentence?
This is thanatolatry, martyropathology or nihilism: when an entire society orients itself in this direction, that society is becoming suicidal.
What part of speech is thanatolatry?
Thanatolatry is a noun.

Words near thanatolatry in the dictionary

  1. thanatographic
  2. thanatographical
  3. thanatographies
  4. thanatography
  5. thanatoid
  6. thanatolatry
  7. thanatologic
  8. thanatological
  9. thanatologically
  10. thanatologies
  11. thanatologist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thanatolatry (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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