Sentence:  Even Rector himself was prey to this spirit of competition and he knew it , not for a more exalted office in the hierarchy of the church - his ambitions for the bishopry had <WSD>died</WSD> very early in his career - but for the one clear victory he had talked about to the colonel . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  pass from physical life and lose all bodily attributes and functions necessary to sustain life