deathwardsadv.adj.

1727 E. Boyd Variety: a Poem 24 The Boy, ungracious, up-hill Deathwards climbs.

a1821 J. Keats Hyperion (new ed.) 13 in Misc. Philobiblon Soc. (1856–7) III Deathwards progressing To no death was that visage.

1845 P. J. Bailey Festus (ed. 2) 63 All mortal natures fall Deathwards.

1923 R. Macaulay Told by Idiot ii. xxviii. 181 The century swaggered deathwards, gay with gold and fatness, unsteady, dark and confused.

1965 Rev. Politics 27 418 The context of the sentence is thoughts of death and of the dead, of a whole country swooning deathwards under the falling snow.

2007 Belfast Tel. (Nexis) 16 June All conspiracies turn deathwards and I think ultimately death is the question that interests everybody.

1880 R. H. Hutton in Fraser's Mag. May 665 The ‘life-wards’ or ‘death-wards’ tendency of our actions.

1975 Irish Univ. Rev. 5 63 He..went in his dream leading not led choosing and doing outside of rules in deathwards race.

2005 H. Vendler Invisible Listeners ii. 51 The primal wish for human intimacy..strives continually against a deathwards drift toward intimacy with nonbeing.