Part 54

Bacon.

Dearth (?), n. [OE. derthe, fr. dere. See Dear.] Scarcity which renders dear; want; lack; specifically, lack of food on account of failure of crops; famine.

There came a dearth over all the land of Egypt.

Acts vii. 11.

He with her press'd, she faint with dearth.

Shak.

Dearth of plot, and narrowness of imagination.

Dryden.

De`ar*tic"u*late (?), v. t. To disjoint.

Dear"worth` (?), a. [See Derworth.] Precious. [Obs.] Piers Plowman.

Dear"y (?), n. A dear; a darling. [Familiar]

De"as (?), n. See Dais. [Scot.]

Death (dth), n. [OE. deth, deað, AS. deáð; akin to OS. dð, D. dood, G. tod, Icel. dauði, Sw. & Dan. död, Goth. dauþus; from a verb meaning to die. See Die, v. i., and cf. Dead.] 1. The cessation of all vital phenomena without capability of resuscitation, either in animals or plants.

Local death is going on at all times and in all parts of the living body, in which individual cells and elements are being cast off and replaced by new; a process essential to life. General death is of two kinds; death of the body as a whole (somatic or systemic death), and death of the tissues. By the former is implied the absolute cessation of the functions of the brain, the circulatory and the respiratory organs; by the latter the entire disappearance of the vital actions of the ultimate structural constituents of the body. When death takes place, the body as a whole dies first, the death of the tissues sometimes not occurring until after a considerable interval. Huxley.

2. Total privation or loss; extinction; cessation; as, the death of memory.

The death of a language can not be exactly compared with the death of a plant.

J. Peile.

3. Manner of dying; act or state of passing from life.

A death that I abhor.

Shak.

Let me die the death of the righteous.

Num. xxiii. 10.

4. Cause of loss of life.

Swiftly flies the feathered death.

Dryden.

He caught his death the last county sessions.

Addison.

5. Personified: The destroyer of life, -- conventionally represented as a skeleton with a scythe.