Die is the simplest word in this group, the most straightforward and direct way of saying to stop living, to experience the permanent cessation of all vital functions. It is used figuratively in reference to anything that ceases to exist.

• The smile died on his lips; The flames in the fireplace died slowly, keeping the room warm for an hour or more.

To die with one’s boots on originally designated the end of a person who died violently, especially in battle and in the kind of battle dress which included boots. Today a person who dies with his boots on is one who dies while engage in some activity, as his work, profession, etc., not during a period of prolonged illness or retirement. Expire means to breathe out air from the lungs. This sense is extended somewhat euphemistically to a breathing out of one’s last breach and so is synonymous with die : the old man expired only after he’d made a final confession and been administered extreme unction. It is also used figuratively of things that cease to exist by reaching a natural limit: my lease will expire on September 30th of this year. To perish is to die untimely or in a violent way: hundreds of sheep perished that year because of drought. Perish is a rather literary word and is often used to denote complete destruction and decay: a civilization that perished of greed and decadence. Depart is a euphemism suggestive of the soul’s leaving this plane of existence at the time of death and going on to another life elsewhere. Pass away , pass on and pass over all are like depart in their implication of moving to an afterlife, while go to meet one’s Maker is even more explicit in its designation of the terminal point of the soul’s journey. Bite the dust and kick the bucket are both slang expressions for die . The former once pertained especially to death on the battlefield where one literally bit the dust in a fall from a horse when wounded. Today it applies not only to actual death but to the figurative death that is caused by failure or ruin: Another small business bit the dust this week. Kick the bucket is thought by some to be derived from the last act of a person who hangs himself by fixing round his neck a noose which is attached to the ceiling and then kicking away an upturned bucket on which he has been standing.