死亡
しぼう · shibou · JLPT N3 · noun
death
🪦 死亡 = die (死) + perish (亡): two words for dying, stacked
死 (shi) means to die, and 亡 (bou) means to perish or be gone. Doubling near-synonyms makes a formal noun, the kind used in news and documents. The shi reading is why 4 (also shi) is an unlucky number in Japan.
死 — 歹 (bare bones) + 匕 (kneeling person)
Originally a pictograph showing a living person (匕) beside skeletal remains (歹), depicting someone mourning or kneeling next to a corpse. The combination came to mean 'death' or 'to die.' The 歹 component, derived from a bone fragment, signals the death-related meaning across many related characters.