deathbed conversion
- noun
:
conversión en el lecho de muerte
- The story of his deathbed conversion inspired many to reconsider their spiritual beliefs.
Examples
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Despite his past actions, he experienced a genuine deathbed conversion and asked for forgiveness.
-
Wilde's decadent homosexuality is diminished in the face of his deathbed conversion, not the other way around.
Blog text (24) -
And while deathbed conversions of Protestants to the Roman Catholic religion may not account for the observed stagnation of the Irish Protestant population in the city from 1842 to 1861, the children of mixed Protestant-Catholic marriages did have an effect in this sense.
Academic text (2003) -
Many people hope for a deathbed conversion to find peace before they pass away.
Synonyms
56
4.8
Changing from one religion or belief to another
Surface Forms
Morphology
deathbed + conversion
The phrase is directly compositional: 'deathbed' (= the bed/on the point of death) combined with 'conversion' (= change of religion) yields the meaning 'a religious change that happens when someone is dying.' This is a common, cross-linguistic descriptive pattern (e.g., Spanish 'conversión en el lecho de muerte'), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can reliably infer the meaning.
Etymology
Deathbed conversion comes from the image of someone on their deathbed suddenly making a conversion to a new faith at the very end of life. So it means a last-minute 'change of belief', and people often doubt if the change is real because it happens so late.