These words refer to something that is no longer in existence. Dead refers, most concretely, to any once-living thing that has died: his dead rabbit; a dead tree. It can even refer to anything that no longer functions: a dead battery. By contrast, deceased and departed are exclusively restricted in reference to dead people. Deceased is a legal term that seems euphemistic in any other context, although it sometimes appears in ordinary use. Departed , by contrast, would strike many as a euphemism for dead ; it is meant to be delicate by suggesting that the dead person has gone to a better world. Compared to departed , dead is simple, dignified, and universally unoffending.

Defunct and extinct contrast with the foregoing by not referring to the death of a living individual at all (except for comic effect). Although defunct could with all seriousness once be used of a dead person, it now applies mainly to the lapsing or closing down of non-living things: a defunct literary magazine; an anthropomorphic attitude that is now defunct in the biological sciences; a defunct restaurant. Extinct refers to the lapsing of a whole species or line of individuals: when the brontosaurus became extinct ; a family name that became extinct when the only heir died without issue.

Lifeless has a wide range of uses from the literal to the lyrical: lifeless inorganic compounds; dawn lighting the lifeless streets of the city. When used of someone dead, the implication may be of a recent death: staring down at his lifeless face on the pillow.