Sentirse morir

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

In Spanish, "me siento morir" means that I feel terrible, so terrible, that I feel like I'm going to die. It's usually an exaggeration and it's used for when you are feeling very sick, or when you are caught in an awfully uncomfortable situation.

At first, I thought saying this in English as "I feel like dying", but looking for examples I found that it rather means that you want to die, not that you are dying despite yourself. In Spanish this would rather become something like "me quiero morir".

Is there in English a made expression equivalent to "sentirse morir"?


Some examples:

- Hacía tanto calor, que nos sentíamos morir. -> We felt about to die because of the heat.
- Me dio tanta vergüenza, que me sentí morir. -> I felt so ashamed, I thought I was going to die.
- Tengo una gripa tan fuerte, que me siento morir. -> I have such a bad flu that I feel like I'm dying.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by AngelicaDeAlquezar

In Spanish, "me siento morir" means that I feel terrible, so terrible, that I feel like I'm going to die. It's usually an exaggeration and it's used for when you are feeling very sick, or when you are caught in an awfully uncomfortable situation.

At first, I thought saying this in English as "I feel like dying", but looking for examples I found that it rather means that you want to die, not that you are dying despite yourself. In Spanish this would rather become something like "me quiero morir".

Is there in English a made expression equivalent to "sentirse morir"?

You could use the expression '(almost) dying of/with' in a context of where you obviously did not die because you are still here to tell the tale.

When my mother was telling anecdotes about me as a child, I was dying of embarrassment.
When I told him that joke he almost died with laughter.


- Hacía tanto calor, que nos sentíamos morir. -> We felt we were dying with such a heat.
- Me dio tanta vergüenza, que me sentí morir. -> I thought I was going to die of shame.
- Tengo una gripa tan fuerte, que me siento morir. -> I have such a bad flu that I feel like I'm dying

[poli]

In American English I felt like I was going to (gonna) die is very common and equal to sentirse morir.

[chileno]

Also, I felt like I was dying.

about to = a punto de, casi

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Thank you all!

[JPablo]

¡Quiero vivir! Dios es vida.
¿No veis que en vida convierte
la ancianidad que en la muerte
cayó con dulce caída?
¿No soy yo vida nacida
de vidas que a mí se dieran?
Pues vidas que en mí se unieran,
si vivo, no han de morir,
¡por eso quiero vivir,
porque mis muertos no mueran!

O sea, que todo este tema a mí me recuerda el tema de la vida... (y la sección del poema de Gabriel y Galán que cito y que recuerdo al pie de la letra desde que lo aprendí en mi adolescencia...) y claro... "He waaaaants to live foreeeever..."
Pero eso no quiere decir tampoco que nunca me haya sentido morir...

[pjt33]

Originally Posted by AngelicaDeAlquezar

At first, I thought of saying this in English as "I feel like dying", but looking for examples I found that it rather means that you want to die

I feel like X can mean I have the sensation of being X, (informal) I have the sensation that X is true, or I have a mild desire for X. This lends itself to a clichéd joke:

Alice: I feel like (e.g.) a ham sandwich.
Bob: You don't look like a ham sandwich.

When X is a non-finite verb, I think it's almost always expressing a desire, and when it's a finite verb I think it's almost always expressing a sensation.

PS I think you can get away with it rather means, but it's ambiguous between rather as emphatic or contrastive. I would prefer it means rather.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Thank you for the corrections and the new answer.
Now I wonder what a ham sandwich would ever feel like.