may he rest in peace
- idiom
- Formal
:
que descanse en paz
- During the memorial, I heard many people say, "May he rest in peace" for their dear friend.
Examples
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May he rest in peace.
Blog text (6) -
At the funeral, everyone whispered, "May he rest in peace," as they remembered his kind spirit.
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In his eulogy, she concluded with the touching line, "May he rest in peace and always be remembered."
Synonyms
1
9.0
People say it to show respect for a man who has died
To die peacefully, people say this as a gentle way to talk about someone's death
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally built: 'may' signals a wish and 'he rest in peace' combines 'rest' + 'in' + 'peace' to express peaceful after-death repose. Because each part keeps its ordinary meaning and many languages have an equivalent condolence formula, a B1 learner who knows the constituent words can reliably infer the phrase's meaning.
Etymology
May he rest in peace comes from an old church prayer in Latin that people put on tombstones and say at funerals. It was a short wish asking that the dead person would rest and 'find peace', so today we say it to show respect and to wish someone 'be at peace' after death.