EVIE KING: I mean, if I was to google synonyms of ‘dead’ - let's try that. Synonyms, ‘dead’. See what comes up. ‘Deceased.’

HZ: ‘Deceased’ is just Latin for death.

EVIE KING: ‘Late’, ‘lost’, ‘lamented’...

HZ: ‘Lamented’! 

EVIE KING: ‘Expired’ - expired! Like a cheese. ‘Departed’. ‘Gone’. ‘No more. ‘Fallen. ‘Slain’. Now you're starting to infer causes of death. ‘Slaughtered’, ‘killed’ - see, it escalates quickly. There’s not much, there's not much is there?

HZ: Which is odd considering how much death there is everywhere for everyone.

EVIE KING: Yeah, you get more, more synonyms for very boring words, don't you, very workaday words. I think basically maybe it comes down to the fact that dead is dead and we all know what that means, universally dead is dead, and there's no getting away from it, there's no escaping it and there's no getting around it. So we just have to face that word and use it. And if we don't feel like saying dead, we'll just go “passed away”. 

HZ: Maybe that's the thing: maybe we don't need new vocabulary yet until we've learnt to get comfortable with ‘dead’.

EVIE KING: And then we can start really jazzing it up. Creating fun terms! Like, you know, when you get things like ‘bottomless brunch’ - that kind of thing for ‘dead’. I think we all know we've arrived when we've got a jazzy snazzy word for ‘dead’. 

HZ: Something to look forward to.