give-up the ghost

Questions about give-up the ghost

What does give-up the ghost mean?

give-up the ghost means "pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life".

What is another word for give-up the ghost?

Close synonyms include die, decease, perish, go, exit. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is give-up the ghost a common word?

give-up the ghost is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.