Is there a special word for a death anniversary? For example a birth anniversary would be a "birthday", but what would a death anniversary be?
Learn English – Special word for death anniversary
single-word-requests
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Best Answer
The word for a death anniversary is... anniversary.
In the instance of a death, you would modify it with a prepositional expression. An example would be:
We usually associate anniversary with marriages or work tenure, but the term is etymologically agnostic to those distinctions. Much like there isn't a special word for "sports car" (outside of the actual names of cars, like Ferrari, or Lamborghini); it's just a car that's intended for the sport of driving.
English has not accommodated in wide use any of the other answers suggested so far (deathday*, deathiversary, heavenly birthday, yahrzeit). [*deathday, is a lazy portmanteau. Its history only attests to its obsolescence, and it is in the bottom 20% of looked-up words, and an uncommon expression. ]