Noun

Singular decedent

Plural decedents

decedent (plural decedents)

1. (law, chiefly US) A dead person.

Death is the irreversible termination of the biological functions that define a living organism. It refers to both a particular event and to the condition that results thereby. The true nature of the latter has for millennia been a central concern of the world's religious traditions and of philosophical enquiry. Many religions maintain a belief in either some kind of afterlife or rebirth. The effect of physical death on any possible mind or soul remains for many an open question. Within the scientific community, death is frequently associated with a belief in materialism and the complete ending of mind or consciousness. Yet despite the common notion that this is a scientific viewpoint, consciousness itself has yet to be fully understood in science and psychology, and any view about the existence or non-existence of consciousness after death remains a speculative belief.

Animals almost without exception die in due course from senescence. Some exceptions to this include the hydra, rockfish, turtles and whales, all documented to live 200 years or longer without showing signs of aging. Intervening phenomena which commonly bring death earlier include malnutrition, predation, disease, accidents resulting in terminal physical injury, or, in extreme circumstances, grave ecosystem disruption. Intentional human activity causing death includes suicide, homicide, and war. Roughly 150,000 people die each day across the globe. Death in the natural world can also occur as an indirect result of human activity: an increasing cause of species depletion in recent times has been destruction of ecological systems as a consequence of the widening spread of industrial technology.

Death in this context is now seen as less an event than a process: conditions once considered indicative of death are now reversible. Where in the process a dividing line is drawn between life and death depends on factors beyond the presence or absence of vital signs. In general, clinical death is neither necessary nor sufficient for a determination of legal death. A patient with working heart and lungs determined to be brain dead can be pronounced legally dead without clinical death occurring. Precise medical definition of death, in other words, becomes more problematic, paradoxically, as scientific knowledge and technology advance.