Definition

1. Verb:
   • To convulse just before death: To make violent, involuntary, and often final movements or struggles as the body dies.
   • (Figurative) To be in its final, desperate stages; to make a last, futile effort: Used to describe a person, organization, or idea that is failing or being defeated but is still putting up a weak final resistance.

Usage Examples

• Verb (Literal):

  • Con cá nằm trên bờ, giãy chết. (The fish lay on the shore, convulsing before death.)
  • Con rắn bị đập đầu nhưng vẫn còn giãy chết một lúc. (The snake was hit on the head but still convulsed in its death throes for a while.)

• Verb (Figurative):

  • Chế độ cũ đang giãy chết trước làn sóng cách mạng. (The old regime is in its death throes before the revolutionary wave.)
  • Đó chỉ là hành động giãy chết của một công ty sắp phá sản. (That is just a last, desperate act of a company on the verge of bankruptcy.)

Advanced Usage

• The term is often used in political, social, or competitive contexts to emphasize the inevitability of an opponent's defeat and the pathetic nature of their final efforts.

Variants and Related Words

• Giãy giụa (v): To struggle violently (can be in death throes or in other situations, like resisting capture or in pain).

  • Nó giãy giụa để thoát khỏi tay kẻ bắt. (It struggled violently to escape the captor's grip.)

• Hấp hối (v): To be in the throes of death, to be dying (less focused on physical movement, more on the state of approaching death).

  • Bệnh nhân đang hấp hối. (The patient is in the throes of death.)

Synonyms

• To be in one's death throes: The closest English equivalent for the literal meaning.
• To make a last-ditch effort / a final, desperate struggle: For the figurative meaning.

Related Idioms

• Giãy như đỉa phải vôi: (To writhe like a leech hit with lime) An idiom describing violent, panicked writhing, often in a desperate situation. It shares the sense of desperate struggle with "giãy chết" but is not exclusively about death.
  • Nghe tin đó, hắn giãy như đỉa phải vôi. (Hearing that news, he writhed in panic.)

verb

1. to convulse just before death