obituary
English
Etymology
From Medieval Latin obituarius, from Latin obitus (“a going to a place, approach, usually a going down, setting (as of the sun), fall, ruin, death”), from obire (“to go or come to, usually go down, set, fall, perish, die”), from ob (“toward, to”) + ire (“to go”).
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /əˈbɪtjʊəɹɪ/, /əʊ̯ˈbɪtjʊəɹɪ/, /əˈbɪtjʊəɹiː/, /əʊ̯ˈbɪtjʊəɹiː/
Audio (UK) (file)
- (General American) IPA(key): /əˈbɪt͡ʃuˌɜɹi/, /oʊˈbɪt͡ʃuˌɜɹi/, /əˈbɪt͡ʃəɹi/, /oʊˈbɪt͡ʃəɹi/
Noun
obituary (plural obituaries)
- A brief notice of a person’s death, as published in a newspaper.
- Synonym: (colloquial) obit
- 2001, Marc Klein, Serendipity, spoken by Dean (Jeremy Piven):
- You know the Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died: "Did he have passion?".
- 2007, Bridget Fowler, The Obituary as Collective Memory, Routledge, →ISBN:
- Obituary editors are confronted daily with the need to make delicate hermeneutic interpretations of the social meaning of individuals' deaths and to express these powerfully to their readership.
- A biography of a recently deceased person, written by a journalist and published in a newspaper.
- A register of deaths in a monastery.
Related terms
- obit
- obitual
- obituarist
Translations
brief notice of a person's death, as published in a newspaper
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biography of a recently deceased person
|
See also
- necrology (listing of people who have died during a specific period of time)
Adjective
obituary (not comparable)
- Relating to the death of a person.
Further reading
- obituary in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
- obituary in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
- obituary at OneLook Dictionary Search
- “obituary”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.