Guy Hasson is an SF author and a filmmaker. His latest books are Secret Thoughts by Apex Books and The Emoticon Generation by Infinity Plus. His 45-minute epic SF film, The Indestructibles, which he wrote and directed, will be released on the web in a few weeks, and his start-up New Worlds Comics will go live in July.
Death is not the end. Ask any zombie. Or check with your neighborhood vampire.
And yet the English language has been criminally lax in coping with the supremely real situations that science fiction and fantasy have been aware of for years. There are so many situations that deal with various versions of death as well as situations that arise afterwards, and yet there are no words specifically designed to describe these situations. One can only ask: Where’s Saffire? And why is he letting death stop him from rectifying this problem?
English has only given us the word ‘predecease’ which surely you’ve used countless times before. While others may mangle the language by saying ‘the son died before the father’ we all know the correct phrase is ‘the son predeceased the father’.
This article is meant to at least begin to put right the lack of death in the English language by offering eight new essential words, just like ‘predecease‘, about the subject we all love to love:
Redecease – (v.) To kill a deceased person. As in “The zombie redeceased the vampire.”
Uberdecease – (v.) To die in such an over-the-top fashion as to clearly be seeking attention. As in “Her parents were in a car accident. Her father died immediately. Not to be outdone, her mother uberdeceased for two weeks.”
Infradecease – (v.) When someone dies under the radar and no one notices for a period that exceeds two weeks. As in: “The police concluded that the old woman infradeceased because all her relatives predeceased her.”
Overdecease – (v.) To die from more than one thing at once. As in “The victim overdeceased from aliens and a vampire.”
Outdecease – (v.) A death that sucks all the attention from all other deaths within one’s span of attention. As in “Marilyn Monroe outdeceased all her contemporaries.”
Semidecease – (v.) To begin the process of death, only to change one’s mind in the middle. As in “She swallowed the pills, then semideceased and called an ambulance.”
Postdeceased – (n.) Just as a postcard is a card sent through the post, a postdeceased is a deceased sent through the post. As in “Enjoy your stay in the Bahamas and remember to send me a postdeceased twice a week!”
Preredecease – (v.) When a deceased person redeceases before another deceased person. As in: “The zombie set the bomb on timer and was then redeceased by the vampire. If said bomb redeceased the vampire, then the zombie preredeceased the vampire.”
Join us next time, as we discuss a new addition to the English language: ‘precircumcise’.
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