Walking with dead

Books gave immortality a bad name, and video games redeemed it. The main root in the word comes from Latin, “mors”, and it means “death”. So you have the standard words like mortuary, mortician (an actor of death, so an undertaker) and mortality spawning off of it. Over time though, it also came to be associated with fear; so you have mortify (or being excessively frightened or embarrassed almost as if a fear of death ran through you) and morbid (or frightful, almost as if “characterized by death”). Other than that, if your portal gun-carrying, alcoholic grandfather forces you to come on deathly adventures with him, “mort” also makes for a good name in Morty; or Voldemort when you want to escape death until you’re killed by the Master of Death (“vol” is flight in French).

The other common root for death comes from the usual suspect Ancient Greek, in “necr-“. And it makes up all the disgusting words like necrophilia (being accused of which is still better than being accused of animal cruelty). If you write obituaries and obituary notices, as in George Lucas for Star Wars, then you’re a necrographer (I seriously believe that word has much more potential though). 

If you study the dead you’re a necrologist. We also get necrophobia, and the slightly religious, slightly demonic (as is the case with things usually), necrophagia or “the practise of feeding on corpses”. There are better things to eat though, and there are important lessons in that thought, lest you cause a pandemic.