die

To die is to stop living. A plant dies if you forget about it for a fortnight, a phone dies at the worst possible moment, and a person dies — the plain word, which English surrounds with a hundred softer ones because it is hard to say out loud.

Die takes no object: things die, and you cannot die something. For that you need kill. The past is died, and the -ing form is dying with a single i — dyeing with an e is about colour, and the two get confused constantly. You die of something or from something: of old age, of a fever, from his injuries. Away from death the verb just means stop — the engine died at the lights, the music died away, the conversation died. And a separate word is spelled the same: a die is one of a pair of dice, and it is also the shaped block a factory presses metal against to cut it to shape.

Phrases it lives in

• be dying to do something — want to do it very much
• old habits die hard — people find it very hard to change
• the die is cast — the decision is made and cannot be taken back