death wish

noun

: the conscious or unconscious desire for the death of oneself or of another

Examples of death wish in a Sentence

Have you seen the way she drives? She must have a death wish.

Recent Examples on the Web

Clark Gable stars as Commander Richardson, a commander with a chip on his shoulder, and possibly a death wish, after losing a ship and much of his crew to a Japanese destroyer. —Keith Phipps, Vulture, 22 Nov. 2024

Youth with a death wish On the outskirts of the West Bank’s largest city, Ramallah, is another urban refugee camp called Qalandiya. —Hadeel Al-Shalchi, NPR, 7 Sep. 2024

Reduced to occasionally doing commercials for used cars, and spending most of his days drinking, despairing, and sporadically playing Russian roulette in a retirement home for actors, the curmudgeonly Montana has a death wish that only sheer luck has kept him from fulfilling. —Joe Leydon, Variety, 5 Mar. 2025

Is the speaker appreciating a peaceful winter scene or barely suppressing a death wish? —Maggie Doherty, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1856, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for death wish

• bluefish
• catfish
• codfish
• crawfish
• dogfish
• finfish
• flatfish
• goldfish
• groundfish
• kingfish
• offish
• redfish

Medical Definition

death wish

noun

: the conscious or unconscious desire for the death of another or of oneself

called also destrudo