thanato-, thanat-, thanas-, -thanasia, -thanasic, -thanatous +

(Greek: death, dead)

thanatopsis
1. An essay expressing a view on the subject of death.
2. A contemplation of death.
3. An expression of someone’s thoughts about death, e.g. in a poem.
Thanatopsis
by William Cullen Bryant
(the last part)

So live that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
See the full version of Thanatopsis.
thanatopsy, thanatopsia
Another word for autopsy or a surgical procedure, postmortem, which involves the examination of body tissues, often to determine the cause of death; necropsy.
thanatorium
An establishment where people are received in order to be killed; a place of death.
thanatos
1. The universal death instinct theorized by Sigmund Freud; so, in psychiatry, an instinct or impulse to seek peace in nonexistence, often manifested in aggressive behavior; death instinct.
2. In psychoanalysis, the death principle, representing all instinctual (natural inward impulse; unconscious, involuntary, tendencies toward senescence [old age] and death).

According to Freud’s (1920) hypothesis, life instincts of self-preservation and sex are in conflict with a death instinct, the purpose of which is to reduce life-forms to inanimate matter.

Thanatos
In Greek mythology, Thanatos supposedly resided in the lower world and was the personification of death.

He was the son of Nyx (goddess of the night) and the brother of Hypnos (sleep). The Roman equivalent for this character is Mors.

thanatosis, thanatosia
1. Religious rites in honor of the dead.
2. Putting to death.
3. The act of feigning death.
4. The sum of the morphological changes indicative of cell death and caused by the progressive degradative action of enzymes which may affect groups of cells or part of a structure or a bodily organ.
5. In medicine, gangrene or death of tissue, usually in considerable mass and generally associated with the loss of vascular (nutritive) supply and followed by bacterial invasion and putrefaction.
thanatotic
A reference to a state of hypnosis or an apparent inanimation assumed by some insects.
thanatotyphus
Malignant or deadly typhus.

Related "death, dead; kill" units: -cide; lethal-; mort-; neci-; phono-; necro-.