euthanasia

plural euthanasias · alternative archaic euthanasy

1. uncountableusuallyThe practice of intentionally killing a human being or animal in a humane way, especially in order to end suffering.

   Euthanasia is the most difficult part of a veterinarian's job.

   1 more example

   In recent years, the sisters spoke openly about their desire for euthanasia in the event that one of them became gravely ill.

   2025 November 19, Clay Risen, “Alice and Ellen Kessler, ’60s Singing Sensations, Die at 89”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Synonyms: mercy killing

2. NazismespeciallyeuphemisticuncountableusuallyThe practice of killing a human being who is considered a liability to society, especially a disabled person.

   Nevertheless, as Henry Friedlander pointed out years ago, it was not Jews but mentally and physically disabled people who became targets of the first large-scale, systematic killings in Nazi Germany, under the euphemistically labelled “Euthanasia Program.”

   2016, Doris L. Bergen, “Introduction”, in War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, page 3

3. obsoleteuncountableusuallyAn easy death, or the means to bring about such a death.

   For myself I could hold it in my account with God to find such an euthanasia for you, even at this moment if it were best.

   1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Westminster [London]: Archibald Constable and Company, […], →OCLC

   3 more examples

   It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain from the chaff of the historians of his life.

   1819 October 31, Thomas Jefferson, Letter To William Short, Monticello

   Had they understood their place, and what to do in it, this French Revolution, which went forth explosively in years and in months, might have spread itself over generations; and not a torture-death but a quiet euthanasia have been provided for many things.

   1837, Thomas Carlyle, “Kings and Emigrants”, in The French Revolution: A History […], volume II (The Constitution), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, book V (Parliament First)

   This purely painless process, this descent by oblivious trance into oblivion, this natural physical death, is the true euthanasia; and it is the duty of those we call physicians to secure for man such good health as shall bear him in activity and happiness onward in his course to this goal. For euthanasia, though it be open to every one born of every race, is not to be had by any save through obedience to those laws which it is the mission of the physician to learn, to teach, and to enforce. Euthanasia is the sequel of health, the happy death engrafted on the perfect life.

   1876, Natural Euthanasia: Popular Science Monthly, volume 8