thanatophilia means the love of death. It carries an Arena rating of 1389, earned across 66 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, thanatophilia ranks #178 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #1,950 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #2,203 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #3,949 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words.
Why “thanatophilia” is a great word
THANATOPHILIA — [Noun] A profound, often aesthetic, attraction to or fascination with death and its associated phenomena. From the combining form thanato-, from Greek thanatos ("death"), and -philia, from Greek philia ("friendship, love, attraction"). Earliest known use in English is from 1974. Unlike "thanatophobia" (a shuddering dread of mortality) or "necrophilia" (a clinical paraphilia fixated on corpses), thanatophilia is a philosophical gravity, a turning of the mind toward the terminus in a state of mesmerized contemplation. It is the quiet pilgrim in a rain-slicked graveyard, the deliberate tracing of a finger along the cold edge of a marble tomb, the sustained study of a painted skull in a vanitas still life—a melancholic courtship with the only certainty that gives contour and meaning to all it contains.
Etymology
From thanato- + philia.
noun
- The love of death.e.g.“What has obsessed the Irishman with thanatophilia — this love of death, decadence and decay?” — 1950, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Rolling Down the Lea, page 142:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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