MEANING
1. Of an illness or condition, expected to end in death because it cannot be cured or controlled.
2. Situated at, forming, or relating to the end of something.
3. Extremely bad, tedious, or unpleasant, described as though beyond recovery.
Use it for
describing a life-limiting diagnosis; distinguishing terminal illness from serious but recoverable illness; portraying a person confronting an expected end of lifeDistinguishes an illness expected to end in death from general deterioration and from the word’s unrelated everyday technical nouns. Writing functions: Death / Mortality.
Words that belong together
- a terminal illness
- terminal cancer
- a terminal diagnosis
On the page
After the terminal diagnosis, she began labeling the photographs.
The story follows a terminal patient who refuses to abandon an unfinished garden.
The estate had entered a terminal stage of neglect.
At the terminal point of the path stood a small, roofless shrine.
He complained of terminal boredom halfway through the meeting.
Word forms
- Base
- terminal
Usage notes
Adjective in senses 1–3; normally not graded in the illness or endpoint meanings. Countable noun in senses 4–6: terminal, terminals. No verbal forms. Terminal illness is a prognosis, not a precise timetable. Register: neutral. Commonness: common across medical, transport, and computing contexts (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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