culture of death

noun

In contemporary cultural discourse, a culture asserted to be inconsistent with the concept of a "culture of life," such as cultures that support contraception and abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, human cloning, self-absorption, apathy or poverty, or fail to view human beings as ends in themselves in any other way.

Meanings

nounculture of death (plural cultures of death)

plural cultures of death

  1. CatholicismIn contemporary cultural discourse, a culture asserted to be inconsistent with the concept of a "culture of life," such as cultures that support contraception and abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, human cloning, self-absorption, apathy or poverty, or fail to view human beings as ends in themselves in any other way.
  2. A society that reveres suicide bombers as martyrs.

    Suicide bombings ... were still wrong because such reasoning promotes a culture of death and nihilism that will take years to erase from the Palestinian narrative

    2009, Joshua Craze, Mark Huband, The Kingdom: Saudi Arabia and the Challenge of the 21st Century, Hurst Publishers, page 289
    2 more examples

    But can one nevertheless regard suicide bombing as an expression of the political culture—the culture of death—that has emerged in modern times in the Middle East?

    2007, Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing, Columbia University Press, page 50

    Still, with ... each individual case ... of individual suicide bombers ... it seems that we have to acknowledge first of all that there is a larger pattern of a culture of death

    2007, Israel W. Charny, Fighting Suicide Bombing: A Worldwide Campaign for Life, Greenwood Publishing Group, page 77

Origin

Translations

Polish cywilizacja śmierci, cywilizacja śmierci
  • cywilizacja śmierciin contemporary political and philosophical discourse, a culture that is deemed to be inconsistent with the concept of a "culture of life"
  • cywilizacja śmiercisociety that reveres suicide bombers as martyrs
Cite this entry
APA

culture of death. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/culture%20of%20death

MLA

“culture of death.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/culture%20of%20death. Accessed November 5, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “culture of death,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/culture%20of%20death.

Source: culture of death on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.