Definition of "death's-head" [death's•-head]

• The human skull as a symbol of mortality or death. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Daniel Hertzberg for The Wall Street Journal Colson Whitehead The rollicking gusto of some of the writing, with its overheated adjectives and over-the-top images, is hard to resist: It was the passionless, death's-head skull of a long-dead corpse, instinct with hellish life; and the glazed eyes swollen and bulbous betrayed the thing's blindness."
• "The death's-head hawk moth is the largest moth to fly in Britain and has the ability to fly into beehives in search of honey without being stung."
• "The death's-head, a forbiddingly charismatic insect with a distinctive skull pattern on its thorax, has been sighted along the south coast at Arne, Dorset, and in Plymouth, Devon, in what is proving to be a vintage autumn for exotic migratory moths."