Word.ws English Dictionary

mortal coil

mortal coil noun: the chaos and confusion of life.

Noun

mortal coil (plural mortal coils)

  1. The chaos and confusion of life.
  2. The physical body of a man (containing the spirit inside).
    • […] [A black swallowtail] does not—as a true insect does—change from worm to grub, and from grub to his mature form, but simply “shuffles off his mortal coil,”—skin, hairs, and leggings all complete, now and then, […] . He then leaves his shuffled-off “mortal coil” hanging upon a fragment of dirty...1871, “T. A.”, “Polyxenes”, in J. E. Taylor et al. (editors), Hardwicke’s Science-Gossip for 1872, Robert Hardwicke (1873), page 32
    • Shakespeare represents the human body under various figures: a coil: a case: a frame: a machine: a vesture: a heft: a motion or puppet: &c. It has been contended that in Hamlet’s speech, the ‘mortal coil’ is the coil, i.e. trouble of turmoil, incident to man’s mortal state: but the analogies are...1874, C. M. Ingleby, The Still Lion: An Essay Towards the Restoration of Shakespeare’s Text, Trübner & Co., page 87

Examples of mortal coil in a sentence

  • He then leaves his shuffled-off “mortal coil” hanging upon a fragment of dirty cobweb, as before described.1871, “T. A.”, “Polyxenes”, in J. E. Taylor et al. (editors), Hardwicke’s Science-Gossip for 1872, Robert Hardwicke (1873), page 32
  • His soul may have found rest, but “his mortal coil” certainly did not.1918, Roy Chapman Andrews, Yvette Borup Andrews, Camps and Trails in China: A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in...
  • She escaped her mortal coil and moved out, looking back at herself as she stood motionless, clutching the stone that had become the link between her body and her spirit.2003, R. A. Salvatore, Immortalis, Random House, Inc., published 2004, →ISBN, page 114:

Forms of mortal coil

pluralmortal coils

Origin of mortal coil

Alluding to Hamlet. The two senses result from two interpretations of the word coil, one taking it to mean “tumult, confusion, fuss”, the other “case, wrapping”. In either case, the phrase shuffle off this mortal coil must mean “die”. Since shuffle off in this case is generally taken to mean “get rid of” or “evade”, it is likely that in the sense that Shakespeare used it, it was specifically referring to the act of suicide.

Questions about mortal coil

What does mortal coil mean?
Mortal coil means the chaos and confusion of life.
How do you use mortal coil in a sentence?
He then leaves his shuffled-off “mortal coil” hanging upon a fragment of dirty cobweb, as before described.
What part of speech is mortal coil?
Mortal coil is a noun.
What is the plural of mortal coil?
The plural of mortal coil is mortal coils.

Words near mortal coil in the dictionary

  1. mortadella
  2. mortadellas
  3. mortadelle
  4. mortage
  5. mortal
  6. mortal coil
  7. mortal coils
  8. mortal combat
  9. mortal combats
  10. mortal remains
  11. mortal sin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mortal coil (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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