35 Creative Slang Terms for Death From the Past 600 Years

Slang expert Jonathon Green has an amazing interactive timeline taken from his monumental, three-volume Green’s Dictionary of Slang on terms for death. Like his other timelines of terms for sex and naughty bits, a great deal of human creativity is on display. The list goes all the way back to 1350, to a term that we still know today (dead as a doornail). Many of the terms are still familiar, such as bite the dust (1749), kick the bucket (1820), feed the fishes (1820), and hang up one’s hat (1854), but quite a few are less known—and delightful. Here are 35 old slang terms you can use to avoid talking too directly about that thing we don’t like to think about.

1. Turn over the perch (1594)

2. Yield the crow a pudding (1599)

3. Put to bed with a shovel (1707)

4. Put into one’s cool crepe (1725)

5. Slip one’s wind (1772)

6. Go out with a wooden habeas (1785)

7. Hop the twig (1797)

8. Lose the number of one’s mess (1814)

9. Booked by the Gravesend bus (1838)

10. Measure over the counter (1841)

11. Cut the painter (1850)

12. Ride old Charon’s Ferry-boat (1854)

13. Hand in one’s checks (1857)

14. Take a blinder (1859)

15. Lay down one’s knife and fork (1864)

16. Make a die of it (1866)

17. Go up Green River (1872)

18. Stick one’s spoon in the wall (1873)

19. Climb the golden staircase (1883)

20. Deal one’s final lay-out (1887)

21. Push clouds (1887)

22. Climb the greasy pole (1890)

23. Pull the string (of the shower bath) (1893)

24. Do a seven (1894)

25. Snuff one’s glim (1900)

26. Throw in one’s toe (1901)

27. Take the count (1902)

28. Shoot one’s star (1903)

29. Toss in one’s agate (1906)

30. Chuck up one’s bunch of fives (1909)

31. Go trumpet cleaning (1915)

32. Become a landowner (1916)

33. Answer the last roll call (1936)

34. Hand in one’s dinner pail (1937)

35. Climb the six foot ladder (1950)

This list first appeared in 2015 and was republished in 2019.