unalive

From un- +‎ alive. Internet usage originates from circumventing systems that were believed to censor or sanction the words related to death, especially "die", "kill", and "suicide".

According to Adam Aleksic, the word in the verb sense of "die, kill" first appeared in a 2013 episode of Ultimate Spider-Man, exploding in usage after a few viral videos in early 2021 popularized the usage. Since early 2022, unalive has become very widespread even outside Internet usage contexts, especially among adolescents. Aleksic argues that the word unalive has gained so much popularity because of a time-invariant tendency to refer to death by euphemism; compare die's displacement of swelt, or the use of pass away.

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˌʌn.əˈlaɪv/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

unalive (comparative more unalive, superlative most unalive)

1. Not alive; dead or inanimate.

   Near-synonym: nonlive

   • 1927, Olive Higgins Prouty, Conflict: A Novel, page 69:

     John Sheldon laid down Sheilah ' s hand beside her on the bed , as if it had been a book , or something unalive, and took out of his bag near by an accessory that was almost as much a part of him as his glasses.

   • 1964, Eric Fromm, The Heart of Man, page 55:

     Often her anxiety will contribute toward making the child afraid of life and attracted to that which is unalive.

   • 1988, Richard Rossner, The Whole Story, page 14:

     She was amazed that he wasn't changed , that he wasn't hurt , or perhaps utterly unalive , murdered .

   • 2000, Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love, page 106:

     I wait for them to droop as in a natural cycle. But they are stubbornly unalive and therefore unwilting.

   • 2012, J. Jeremy Wisnewski, Heidegger: An Introduction, page 104:

     We don't experience a corpse as just an object; we experience it as an object that was once alive, but which no longer is. We experience it as "unalive" (Bt, 282).

2. Lacking vivacity and liveliness; dull or sterile.
   • 1929, American Association of University Women, AAUW Journal - Volumes 23-25, page 106:

     Rebecca despises her professors because they cannot think as clearly as she can, cannot argue as well as she can, and are tired and dowdy and unalive.

   • 1936, Clement Wood, The Glory Road: An Autobiography, page 78:

     The silent city asleep at our back , joyless and unalive.

   • 1944, International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone Research, page 186:

     No, medicine is not an art , it is a science, but a mechanistic, unalive one.

   • 1977, Psychotherapy & Social Science Review - Volume 11, page 4:

     No amount of psychoanalytic interpretation will have an effect if the therapeutic atmosphere is heavy , unalive, and boring .

   • 1983, John S. McCann, The Critical Reputation of Tennessee Williams, page 171:

     SLS seems to me not so much moral or immoral as simply a caricature; not admirable or deplorable, but absurd . . . . I found ( SLS ) hollow , unproductive , unalive , and above all stagy: not cinematic.

   • 2008, The Middle Way - Volumes 83-84, page 145:

     Our perception labels it as negative, just like our minds have been trained to accept only the clinical and unreal, the sterile and unalive, the prepackaged and filtered.

3. Lacking energy and feeling; passionless; mechanical.
   • 1953, Sydney J. Harris, Strictly Personal, page 213:

     Rather be unhappy , and know it , than unalive, and not know it .

   • 1974, William R.Parker, Elaine St. Johus, Prayer Can Change Your Life, page 229:

     But now these symptoms which seemed to be bad and inimical , namely , this anxiety or guilt , prove themselves to be helpful and friendly, for they intrude themselves in order to bring healing by awakening this living yet unalive person.

   • 1975, Clark E. Moustakas, The Touch of Loneliness, page 39:

     If I feel placid or unalive must I feign excitement?

   • 1977, Michael D. Marcaccio, The Hapgoods Three Earnest Brothers, page 157:

     She made him look impetuous, excitable; he made her seem cold, unalive.

   • 1978, Alvin R. Mahrer, Experiencing: A Humanistic Theory of Psychology and Psychiatry, page 268:

     Fromm ( 1968 ) refers to this as the spectre of a mechanized society in which human beings are slowly being transformed into the mechanical thing which is the society - passive, automatic, unfeeling, run by computers, unalive, a product of conditioning.

4. Lacking a fulfilling life; meaningless.
   • 1966, Lois G. Gordon, Dialectic of the Beast and Monk, page 287:

     In one rather poignant moment she reveals this predicament with her husband : if she has emasculated him throughout the years , Willie , in his own passive way , has made her feel similarly unalive: Was I ever lovable ?

   • 2008, William Saroyan, William E. Justice, He Flies Through the Air with the Greatest of Ease, page 28:

     And for the past six months I have been separated from my writing, and I have been nothing, or I have been walking about unalive, some indistinct shadow in a nightmare of the universe.

   • 2009, Carole Jones, Disappearing Men:, page 34:

     It is directly related, however, to being and non-being, a relation which suggests that being is defined by work if without a job one becomes "unalive".

5. (often with "to") Lacking consciousness; unresponsive, indifferent or oblivious.
   • 1930, Sir Mirza M. Ismail, Speeches - Volume 1, page 128:

     We are not unalive to the gravity of the problem of unemployment but we want co-operation here also, and we believe that , if we receive it , hundreds of young men who are now swelling the ranks of the unemployed , may achieve self-support in a happy, healthy and independent life.

   • 1933, Thomas Earle Welby, Second Impressions, page 74:

     The realism was largely mere recoil , by a man unalive to how beer and a ribald joke can carry the common man through bibulation ; but the hunger of the mind was a very positive thing, active in him and in many of his most remarkable characters.

   • 1950, Roy Chapman Andrews, My Favorite Stories of the Great Outdoors, page 314:

     Next day Tappan was not unalive to the changing character of the forest.

   • 1977, Stuart Holroyd, Psi and the Consciousness Explosion, page 204:

     If ... the universe is unalive and indifferent , I will hope and work for something in myself quite different from what I will seek if the universe is laden with mind and life .

   • 1981, Stanley Keleman, Your Body Speaks Its Mind, page 29:

     How unalive we are, how unincarnated we are, reveals itself as unresponsiveness, ungracefulness, and restricted bodily mobility.

unalive (plural unalives)

1. One who is unalive.
   • 1967, Helen Bevington, “Speaking of Books: Hellgazers and Rejoicers”, in The New York Times Book Review, volume 72, page 2:

     Most people are the unalives the notalives, the impersons, existing in an unworld of unlove and unbeing.

   • 2009, Jirí Flajšar, Zénó Vernyik, Words into Pictures: E. E. Cummings’ Art Across Borders, page 83:

     The very latest of Mr. Cummings's new poems are fixed in rigid attitudes of youth, which now seem to show signs of weariness, caused by the strain of a prolonged defiance against "the sweet&aged people who rule this world," against the “unhearts,” the “unminds,” the “unalives."

unalive (third-person singular simple present unalives, present participle unaliving, simple past and past participle unalived) (chiefly Internet slang, nonstandard or euphemistic)

1. (transitive) To make unalive; to kill, especially oneself; to commit suicide.

   Jeffrey Epstein is thought to have unalived himself, but Tucker Carlson calls this position into question.

   • 2017, Nicolas Michaud, Jacob Thomas May, Deadpool and Philosophy: My Common Sense Is Tingling:

     He “unalives” bad guys, sometimes for free, and this gives him a sense of purpose, even in an absurd world.

   • 2017, Margaret Newmeli, Another Dimension: The Ultimate Amalgam, page 160:

     Or does anyone know how to stop Broly without unaliving him?

   • 2019, Aman K Singh, The Deserters: The Curse Bearer, page 237:

     "We are going to 'unalive' them once again,” said Yukt laughing and the men looked at him like he was crazy.

   • 2021 May 18, Katie Storey, “Woman mortified after her old school teacher follows her on OnlyFans… and says she was always ‘something special’”, in The Sun:

     Sharing just how awkward she felt, Rara, who also has her own YouTube channel, joked she wanted to "unalive" herself.

   • 2024 December 9, Colin O'Donnell, “Episode 6497” (0:09:32 from the start), in Hollyoaks‎, spoken by Freddie Roscoe (Charlie Clapham), Channel 4:

     Bro, I was sticking up for you. You better top your coolant up or you're gonna unalive your engine.

   • 2025 March 30, Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James, and Chris Galletta, A Minecraft Movie, spoken by General Chungus (Jarad Hess):

     I'm really sorry, but I have to un-alive you and stuff.

2. (intransitive) To die.
   • 2020, F. H. Fischer, The Second Daughter's Darkness, page 90:

     Carl sighs, and ironically wishes to unalive out loud.

• unvaile