Death Metaphor Debate

The cluster focuses on debates about the appropriateness, offensiveness, and accuracy of using death-related terms like 'killed', 'dead', 'death', and 'mortem' metaphorically in tech contexts such as project post-mortems or app descriptions.

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2,408
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#337
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
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2008
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2009
21
2010
33
2011
49
2012
65
2013
117
2014
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2015
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2016
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2017
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2018
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2019
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2020
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2021
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2022
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2023
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2026
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Keywords

ycombinator.com youtube.com i.e death died dies dead killed word way saying suicide slight phrase

Sample Comments

aj3 • Jul 2, 2021 • View on HN

I think they mean "death prevented" vs "death inflicted".

gknoy • Apr 2, 2013 • View on HN

That's a pretty roundabout way of saying "It's a pity they won't die a painful death".

jbob2000 • Mar 5, 2020 • View on HN

How is using the word “dead” offensive?

csb6 • Nov 21, 2020 • View on HN

“Death” seems a bit dramatic in this context.

bakhy • Dec 6, 2016 • View on HN

i understand i'm nitpicking, but maybe someone should tell the author what "mortem" means? i was expecting something dead, a failure story. pick another worn out phrase ;)

resolutebat • Jun 16, 2023 • View on HN

That's very different from "killed".

selestify • Jan 25, 2021 • View on HN

The word used in the grandparent comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25899179) was “killed,” not “murdered”

robertlagrant • Feb 2, 2023 • View on HN

It's not taboo, it's just misleading. It's like someone falling over, grazing their knee and saying, "Wow, that was like dying, but partial". It doesn't share enough key attributes with the thing you're comparing it to to be useful.

Thats a funny way of saying killed with obvious malicious intent.

Intermernet • Oct 6, 2019 • View on HN

"made a killing" is an unfortunate choice of phrase in this instance.