Definition

1. Noun:
   • A profound personal experience associated with death or coming close to dying: A "near-death experience" refers to a set of sensations, visions, or perceptions reported by individuals who have been clinically dead or very close to death but have been revived. Common elements include feelings of peace, out-of-body sensations, moving through a tunnel, seeing a light, or encountering beings.

Usage Examples

• Noun:
  • After his heart stopped, the patient reported a vivid near-death experience involving a bright light.
  • Her book details the common themes found in thousands of near-death experiences from around the world.
  • Scientists continue to study the neurological basis of the near-death experience.

Advanced Usage

• "to have a near-death experience": This is the standard verb collocation used to describe undergoing this phenomenon.
  • He is convinced he had a near-death experience during the surgery.

Variants and Related Words

• NDE (n): A common initialism for "near-death experience."
  • The researcher collected data on hundreds of NDEs.
• Out-of-body experience (OBE) (n): A specific sensation, often reported as part of a near-death experience, of perceiving one's body from an outside perspective.
  • The out-of-body experience is a frequent component of the near-death experience narrative.

Synonyms

• Deathbed vision: A vision or experience occurring when a person is dying.
• Clinical death experience: An experience occurring during a period of clinical death (cessation of heartbeat and breathing).

Related Phrases

• Near-death phenomenon: A broader term sometimes used to discuss the experience and its associated research.
• To cheat death: An idiomatic expression meaning to narrowly avoid dying, which can be contextually related to having a near-death experience.
  • He cheated death in that accident and had a remarkable story to tell.

Noun

1. the experience of being close to death but surviving