How to Use death wish in a Sentence

death wish

noun
Definition of death wishnext
  • Have you seen the way she drives? She must have a death wish.
  • And slowly, the balance shifts from a death wish to a survival instinct.
    — Alex Davies, WIRED, 11 July 2018
  • If the answer is yes, liberalism would seem to have a death wish.
    — Damon Linker, The Week, 29 Sep. 2021
  • Outlook: Scott has 11 freshmen on the roster, which seems like a death wish in an era of no-sit transfers.
    — Mark Zeigler, San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 Dec. 2021
  • In African landscapes that are green, brown, blue, and yellow, painting your butt with sharp streaks of black and white seems like a death wish.
    — WIRED, 28 Nov. 2022
  • Jason Statham returns as Jonas Taylor, a man with two first names and a death wish, but the real star is all of the Megs and their killing spree.
    — Vulture, 9 May 2023
  • Even Sigmund Freud believed that all humans have a death wish.
    — Donna Sarkar, Discover Magazine, 14 Mar. 2022
  • As with this season’s premiere, Jamie’s death wish is denied and thank goodness for that.
    — Roxane Gay, Glamour, 24 Sep. 2017
  • Especially when their lives are in the hands of a crazypants liar with a death wish who tried to get his ex-girlfriend/boss killed.
    — Annalee Newitz, Ars Technica, 14 Nov. 2017
  • Peters’ own death wish rose up soon after his run for governor, as his bars struggled to stay in the black.
    — oregonlive.com, 22 July 2019
  • My bucket list was morphing into a death wish, even before my first pass across the grass.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 31 July 2020
  • Fish are dying and Surface users are crying, but first: a cartoon about a modern-day death wish.
    — Wired, 11 Nov. 2019
  • Did Trump's 'death wish' comment toward McConnell go too far?
    — Joel Mathis, The Week, 12 Oct. 2022
  • When your choices are to go on a death wish of a mission or die, someone will always die, one way or another.
    — Washington Post, 6 Aug. 2021
  • Wearing your brand new white heels out on a Friday night is basically a death wish, but sometimes, the outfit requires the risk.
    — Danielle Flum, Seventeen, 18 June 2019
  • The challenge itself is as amusing as always, but damn do these British queens have a death wish … for their fellow contestants.
    — Brian Moylan, Vulture, 25 Feb. 2021
  • Eco is only for those with a death wish; this car’s acceleration is leisurely enough.
    — cleveland, 8 Feb. 2020
  • Despite her theatrical death wish pronouncement, Guyger and her defense team are still fighting to save her from life in prison.
    — Kirsten West Savali, Essence, 27 Sep. 2019
  • That will to negate, to kick at society’s glass jaw and not call it a tantrum, changed when the romantic death wish became actual death, and Gunn had to see that beloved figure, dead on the kitchen floor, over and over again.
    — The New Yorker, 30 May 2022
  • Chris Hemsworth stars as a mercenary with a lowkey death wishHemsworth plays Tyler Rake, a killing machine who takes on what seems like a simple assignment, which of course grows complicated, with lots of twists.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, azcentral, 23 Apr. 2020
  • Most of the people sharing photos of domineering goats and marauding boars are not expressing a latent death wish.
    — Amanda Hess, New York Times, 17 Apr. 2020
  • Is leaving high blood pressure untreated really a death wish?
    — Isabella Cueto, STAT, 11 Oct. 2022
  • On May 29th, the second day of no-hiking conditions, one of the various weather reports indicated that, at around 9 p.m., a two-to-four-hour window might open during which a hike could qualify as a risk rather than as a death wish.
    — Heidi Julavit, The New Yorker, 16 Aug. 2021
  • Recent horror stories about people being trapped on cruise ships as the coronavirus raged from deck to deck would make any pending holiday at sea appear more like a death wish than a restful vacation.
    — Los Angeles Times, 31 Mar. 2020
  • Broder finds something both resonant and amusing in our cultural attraction to these kinds of ultra-romantic death wishes.
    — Julia Felsenthal, Vogue, 1 May 2018
  • Freud, in particular, showered Western letters with now common phrases: repression, death wish, slip of the tongue, denial, transference.
    — Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 26 Mar. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'death wish.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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