In the natural world, almost all animals die violently. It is a rare event for an animal to die in its sleep as we would prefer to do ourselves. Peaceful death is a luxury—a luxury almost never found in nature and rarely experienced by humans. Routinely, animals are violently chased down and killed, then eaten. Often, a lone carnivore or a pack of hungries tears the prey apart while it still lives. As Mark Twain observed,
“It’s murder all around.”
Recently, Betty White died in her sleep and some remarked that her death was “due to natural causes.” Some of this was in response to suspicions she might have been killed by the covid-19 vaccine(s). Nevertheless, passing in her sleep was certainly unnatural, if we are accurately and consistently and distinctly going to include natural as part of the phrase.
I’m sure that there are many other inconsistencies in our language. And I have no clue as to how to remedy this one—one that we might deemed as important as life and death and as important legally as homicide. I think we might start with the pathologists and coroners who perform autopsies. I welcome more discussion and suggested solutions for this linguistical miscarriage.
Note: I am very strict about my usage of quotation marks. I use them only for quotes and never for setting off or for emphasis. For these latter purposes I employ italics or underlining.