Last week we discussed the four verbs most commonly used to mean “to die” in Russian: умирать/умереть, погибать/погибнуть, скончаться, and сдыхать/сдохнуть. If you have mastered those, you are able to express pretty well all the most standard shades of meaning. However…

Every Russian will also know a few more synonymous verbs like издыхать/издохнуть, which is used when an animal dies, i.e., it means the same thing as сдыхать/сдохнуть and is conjugated the same way, but it has a more folksy, less educated sound to it. It doesn't have the status of “literary language” as сдыхать/сдохнуть does.

Then there is the imperfective дохнуть, which means the same thing, but is again conversational, not part of the literary language. (Note this is distinct from the verb дохнуть, which means something else entirely.) From дохнуть is derived the verb pair подыхать/подохнуть, which means the same thing.

Then there is околевать/околеть. This word is part of the literary language, and it means that an animal has died. For some people the verb implies that the corpse is already growing cold or stiff, and for some people it implies dying of cold.

Then there is the imperfective verb гибнуть, which means “to perish, die in tragic circumstances” and applies to people.

Then there is the imperfective verb мереть, which is conversational or low-style and can be used when people die. It's used in the incredibly wide-spread phrase «мрут, как мухи» “they are dying like flies.”

Last but not least, there is помирать/помереть, which nowadays is folksy, uneducated speech, and it can be used when people die. In the 19th century, though, this was just a normal word for “to die,” so you can find it in classic Russian literature without any sense of folksiness.

That gives us at least eight different ways to say “Our cow died.”

Let's discuss the differences: