mortality

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English

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Etymology

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From Old French mortalite, from Latin mortālitās, from mortālis (“relating to death”), from mors (“death”); equivalent to mortal +‎ -ity.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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mortality (countable and uncountable, plural mortalities)

  1. The state or quality of being mortal.
    1. The state of being susceptible to death.
      Antonym: immortality
      • 1595, Edmunde Spenser [i.e., Edmund Spenser], “[Amoretti.] Sonnet XIII”, in Amoretti and Epithalamion. […], London: […] [Peter Short] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, signature [A8], verso:
        [H]er minde remembreth her mortalitie, / vvhat ſo is fayreſt ſhall to earth returne.
      • 1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 65”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:
        Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, / But sad mortality o’er-sways their power, / How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, / Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
      • 1714, Alexander Pope, letter to John Gay in Letters of Mr. Pope, and Several Eminent Persons, London, 1735, Volume 2, p. 208,[1]
        I have been perpetually troubled with sickness of late, which has made me so melancholy that the Immortality of the Soul has been my constant Speculation, as the Mortality of my Body my constant Plague.
      • 1829, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Timbuctoo”, in A Complete Collection of the English Poems Which Have Obtained the Chancellor’s Gold Medal in the University of Cambridge‎[2], Cambridge: Macmillan, published 1859, page 156:
        “ […] Thy sense is clogg’d with dull mortality; / They spirit fetter’d with the bond of clay: / Open thine eyes and see.”
      • 1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 2, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings‎[3], New York: Random House, page 157:
        But on that onerous day [of the funeral], oppressed beyond relief, my own mortality was borne in upon me on sluggish tides of doom.
    2. (archaic) The quality of being punishable by death.
      • 1681, John Dryden, The Spanish Fryar: Or, the Double Discovery. […], London: […] Richard Tonson and Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act II, page 28:
        […] actions of Charity do alleviate, as I may say, and take off from the Mortality of the Sin.
    3. (archaic) The quality of causing death.
      Synonyms: deadliness, lethality
      • c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
        Hold therefore Angelo: / In our remoue, be thou at full, our selfe: / Mortallitie and Mercie in Vienna / Liue in thy tongue, and heart: Old Escalus / Though first in question, is thy secondary. / Take thy Commission.
      • 1685, Thomas Willis, Tract of Fevers, Chapter 15, in The London Practice of Physick, London: Thomas Basset and William Crooke, p. 626,[4]
        […] the Fevers of Women in Child-bed; to wit, both the Lacteal, and that called Putrid, which, by reason of its Mortality, deserves to be call’d Malignant.
  2. The number of deaths; and, usually and especially, the number of deaths per time unit (usually per year), expressed as a rate.
    1. Deaths resulting from an event (such as a war, epidemic or disaster).
      • 1722 March, H[enry] F[oe] [pseudonym; Daniel Defoe], A Journal of the Plague Year: […], London: […] E[lizabeth] Nutt […]; J. Roberts […]; A. Dodd […]; and J. Graves […], →OCLC, page 200:
        […] the Mortality was so great in the Yard or Alley, that there was no Body left to give Notice to the Buriers or Sextons, that there were any dead Bodies there to be bury’d.
      • 1853, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 9, in Ruth‎[5], volume 3, London: Chapman and Hall, page 242:
        […] the doctors stood aghast at the swift mortality among the untended sufferers […]
      • 1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015:
        The Great Frost was, historians tell us, the most severe that has ever visited these islands. Birds froze in mid air and fell like stones to the ground. […] The mortality among sheep and cattle was enormous.
    2. (biology, ecology, demography, insurance) The number of deaths per given unit of population over a given period of time.
      Synonyms: death rate, mortality rate, casualty rate
      Coordinate terms: case fatality rate, infection fatality rate, lethality
  3. (figuratively) Death.
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 774-777:
      Why am I mockt with death, and length’nd out / To deathless pain? how gladly would I meet / Mortalitie my sentence, and be Earth / Insensible,
    • 1728, [John] Gay, The Beggar’s Opera. […], London: […] John Watts, […], →OCLC, Act II, scene xi, page 37:
      Learn to bear your Husband’s Death like a reasonable Woman. ’Tis not the fashion, now-a-days so much as to affect Sorrow upon these Occasions. No Woman would ever marry, if she had not the Chance of Mortality for a Release.
    • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter X, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC, page 154:
      […] like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption.
    • 1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, chapter X, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 112:
      […] the moldy odor of mortality hung wet in the air with the sulphurous fog […]
  4. (figuratively, archaic) Mortals collectively.
    Synonyms: humankind, humanity, mankind

Derived terms

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Translations

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