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Glite Dictionary
✈️ Leaving a place 🔀 A change 🕊️ Death (formal)
departure

departure

26 8.8
A polite way to say that someone has died
  • noun
  • /dɪˈpɑrtʃər/
  • Formal
translation icon : fallecimiento
  • We held a memorial service to honor the departure of our beloved grandfather.
  • departure of the soul
  • departure of Saint
  • Paula's departure

Is it a soul departure or a rebirth or finality as your true being dies?

Examples

  • Rav Krushka's departure leaves us facing a void, bewildered.

    Disobedience (2018)

  • The apartment feels empty; my whole body feels empty after his departure, but not an unpleasant kind of emptiness.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • "The time of my departure has come.

    Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018)

  • Your friend's departure shows... ...that death has a new design for all of you.

    Final Destination (2000)

  • It's the hour of departure, oh deserted one.

    Companion (2021)

  • If his arrival in Columbus, Ohio, was a relatively quiet affair, his departure was anything but.

    Academic text (2007)

  • The body is not touched for two hours in order to allow the soul's unhindered departure.

    Academic text (2001)

  • With the departure of the Whitmans, the Bahlkes became the family we were closest to.

    Academic text (2005)

  • - Passion, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, by the coming of our Lord for judgment, to tell me by some sign your name and the day and hour of your departure.

    The Pope's Exorcist (2023)

  • Mr. Wheeler... were you aware that Andrew Beckett was suffering from AIDS at the time of his departure from Wyant-Wheeler?

    Philadelphia (1993)

Synonyms

loss
vsdeparture
795 2.6

The death of someone close to you

names death itself as a polite or formal expression not the grieving experience
passing
vsdeparture
  • Formal
77 5.0

The act of dying used in a gentle way

is more formal and polite rather than gentle or soft in tone
expiration
vsdeparture
  • Formal
3 7.7

The end of a person's life when they stop living

is a polite or formal expression rather than a clinical or technical term

Antonyms

birth
313 1.0

The start of something new, for example a life or an era

Compounds

departure time
3 1.8

A time a train, bus, or plane is planned to leave

departure gate
2 2.4

A place at an airport where passengers wait to get on their plane

departure lounge
1 3.0

A seating area in an airport where passengers wait before boarding their flight

point of departure
1 4.5

An idea or fact used as a starting point for discussion and work

time of departure
1 2.7

The scheduled time when a bus, train, or plane leaves

departure tax
  • Formal
4.8

A tax travelers pay when they leave a country by plane, boat or land

point of departure
4.3

A place where a journey begins

pre-departure
3.8

The time just before someone leaves for a trip

How Formal

exitus
  • Archaic
1 9.9
departure
  • Formal
26 8.8
resignation
  • Formal
197 3.4
exodus
45 7.2
exit
363 1.0
leaving
4 1.0

Surface Forms

departure singular
departures plural

Morphology

departure = depart (semi-transparent) = depart + ure

The meaning 'death' is a euphemistic/metaphorical extension of 'leaving' (depart), so the structural relation is clear but the specific sense requires pragmatic inference.

Etymology

A helpful way to remember the meaning of death is that departure uses the root part, which means 'to leave'. So it pictures someone 'leaving' life and is a polite way to say someone has died.