social death
Complete community rejection
Social death is exclusion so complete that a person effectively ceases to exist in the eyes of a community.
The term originated in sociology to describe the condition of enslaved people stripped of identity, kin ties, and social standing.
It now applies more broadly to severe ostracism—prisoners in solitary confinement, the terminally ill isolated from society, or anyone rendered invisible by systematic exclusion.
Informally and hyperbolically, social death describes embarrassment so severe you feel you can never show your face again: I tripped on stage in front of everyone—it was social death.
- living deathUnbearable prolonged suffering
- ostracismBanishment from a group
- cast outForcibly remove or expel
- anomieBreakdown of shared standards
- nonpersonPolitically erased individual
banishment · isolation · alienation · disenfranchisement · excommunication · damnatio memoriae · memory hole · nullification · erased · condemnation · chattel slavery · exclusion · public shaming · death · outlawry · stigma · civil death · degradation
- disgracedishonor, disgrace, downfall, stigma, scandal
- outcastsoutcast, pariah, pariahs, outcasts, outlaws
- Social rejectionrejection, exclusion, ostracism, snubbed, shunned
- alienationestrangement, disconnection, exclusion, outsider, outcast
- exclusionsexclude, exclusion, excluding, except, exception
- social stigmastigma, stigmatized, shame, shamed, disgrace
social deathsocial inclusion
Full societal participation
belonging · social integration · inclusion · social acceptance · acceptance
social deathcelebrity
Widely recognized public figure
fame · honor · social capital · renown · good standing
social, society, sociable, antisocial, socialize, societies, socially, unsocial, sociability