Word.ws English Dictionary

thanatopic

thanatopic adjective: prone to thanatopsis; morbid.

Adjective

thanatopic (comparative more thanatopic, superlative most thanatopic)

  1. Prone to thanatopsis; morbid.
    • Conrad was always inclined to feel guilty about his thanatopic morbidity and anxious about its reception by an audience conceived of as an interminable succession of Bobrowskis.1987, Mark Albert Thorson, The Kernel Or the Mist: Story Against Discourse in Joseph Conrad, page IR-321
    • Pictures of young lovers creeping up the slope arm-in-arm were published with syrupy thanatopic captions.2003, Peter B. High, Professor David Bordwell, Vance Kepley, The Imperial Screen, page 29
  2. Deadly.
    • Although drawn larger than life, Cather's mythological figure of Eros, with his accompanying thanatopic qualities, does not dwarf Alexandra: rather, he both complements and enhances her psyche as an expression of her desire for more than the patriarchy can offer.1981, Annis Pratt, Barbara White, Andrea Loewenstein, Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction, page 24
    • Thanatopic shuffleboard continues over to starboard; ominous little holes in the deck, bulkhead, railing, and even my little Astroturf square testify to my wisdom in having steered clear of the A.M. Darts Tourney.1996, Harper's - Volume 292, Issues 1748-1753

Forms of thanatopic

comparativemore thanatopic
superlativemost thanatopic

Origin of thanatopic

From Ancient Greek θάνατος (thánatos, “death”) + τοπικός (topikós, “Pertaining to a place or topic”).

Questions about thanatopic

What does thanatopic mean?
Thanatopic means prone to thanatopsis; morbid.
What part of speech is thanatopic?
Thanatopic is an adjective.

Words near thanatopic in the dictionary

  1. thanatophobia
  2. thanatophobiac
  3. thanatophobiacs
  4. thanatophobic
  5. thanatophoric
  6. thanatopic
  7. thanatopolitical
  8. thanatopolitics
  9. thanatopraxis
  10. thanatopraxy
  11. thanatopses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thanatopic (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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Cite this entry: “thanatopic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thanatopic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.