the.com/natural causes
Death's official excuse when nobody wants to do the paperwork.
means A cause of death attributed to internal illness, old age, or organ failure rather than accident, injury, or violence.
from A phrase built plainly from 'natural' (Latin naturalis, of nature or birth) plus 'cause,' used in English since at least the 1500s in legal and medical contexts to separate deaths with no external culprit from those requiring investigation — less a coinage with a story than a quiet bureaucratic habit that calcified into a fixed phrase.
- actual meaning
- body failed on its own, no foul play
- doctor's go-to
- used when the real cause is unclear
- common culprits
- heart failure, old age, undetected disease