mortality
/mɔɹˈtælɪti/
mortality noun: the state of being susceptible to death.
Noun
mortality (countable and uncountable, plural mortalities)
- The state of being susceptible to death.
- [H]er minde remembreth her mortalitie, / vvhat ſo is fayreſt ſhall to earth returne.1595, Edmunde Spenser [i.e., Edmund Spenser], “[Amoretti.] Sonnet XIII”, in Amoretti and Epithalamion. […], London: […] [Peter Short] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, signature [A8], verso
- 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?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
- Antonyms:
- immortality
- The quality of being punishable by death.
- […] actions of Charity do alleviate, as I may say, and take off from the Mortality of the Sin.1681, John Dryden, The Spanish Fryar: Or, the Double Discovery. […], London: […] Richard Tonson and Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act II, page 28
- The quality of causing death.
- 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.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]...
- […] 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.1685, Thomas Willis, Tract of Fevers, Chapter 15, in The London Practice of Physick, London: Thomas Basset and William Crooke, p. 626
- Synonyms:
- deadliness, lethality
- Deaths resulting from an event (such as a war, epidemic or disaster).
- […] 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.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 doctors stood aghast at the swift mortality among the untended sufferers […]1853, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 9, in Ruth, volume 3, London: Chapman and Hall, page 242
- The number of deaths per given unit of population over a given period of time.
- In foundling hospitals, and among the children brought up by parish charities the mortality is still greater than among those of the common people.1776 March 9, Adam Smith, chapter VIII, in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. […], volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC, book I (Of...
- Some of the objects of enquiry would be […] what was the comparative mortality among the children of the most distressed part of the community, and those who lived rather more at their ease […]1798, Thomas Malthus, chapter 2, in An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, pages 32–33
- Synonyms:
- w:mortality rate, MR, death rate, DR
- Death.
- 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,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...
- 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.1728, [John] Gay, The Beggar’s Opera. […], London: […] John Watts, […], →OCLC, Act II, scene xi, page 37
- Synonyms:
- fatality, quietus, death, end, tomb, celestial transfer, decease, decomposition, defunction, dematerialization
- Mortals collectively.
- It is not fit Mortalitie should knowe / What his eternall prouidence decreed,1604, Michael Drayton, Moyses in a Map of His Miracles, London, Book 1, pp. 8-9
- [S]leepe seiz’d his weary eye, / That salues all care, to all mortality.1614–1615, Homer, “The XXIII. Booke of Homers Odysses”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. […], London: […] Rich[ard] Field [and William Jaggard], for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615...
mortality meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
mortality in Hindi
- mortality
- मरण maraṇ
mortality in Tamil
- இறப்பியல்பு, இறப்பு, இறப்பு நிலை, இறப்புக்கணக்கு, இறப்பு அளவு, மரணவீதம்
mortality in Urdu
- mortality
- موت maut
mortality in Bengali
- mortality; perishability; destructibility; the quality of being subject to death or decay
- নশ্বরতা nôśśôrôta
- mortality; the condition of being subject to death
- নশ্বরতা nôśśôrôta
More languagesFewer languages
- mortality in Malayalam
- നശ്വരത, നശ്വരത്വം, അസ്ഥിരത, അനിത്യത
- mortality in Kannada
- ಮರಣ maraṇa
- mortality in Malay
- mortaliti
- mortality in Indonesian
- mortalitas
Examples of mortality in a sentence
- “[…] Thy sense is clogg’d with dull mortality; / They spirit fetter’d with the bond of clay: / Open thine eyes and see.”1829, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Timbuctoo”, in A Complete Collection of the English Poems Which Have Obtained the Chancellor’s Gold Medal in...
- But on that onerous day [of the funeral], oppressed beyond relief, my own mortality was borne in upon me on sluggish tides of doom.1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 2, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Random House, page 157:
- Birds froze in mid air and fell like stones to the ground. […] The mortality among sheep and cattle was enormous.1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no....
- The mortality in the barracks was, she found, nearly double the mortality in civil life.1918 May 9, Lytton Strachey, “[Florence Nightingale.] Chapter X”, in Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr....
Synonyms of mortality
- deadliness
- lethality
- w:mortality rate
- MR
- death rate
- DR
- fatality
- quietus
- death
- end
25 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- tomb
- celestial transfer
- decease
- decomposition
- dematerialization
- demise
- dirt nap
- doom
- exit
- expiration
- liquidation
- passing
- repose
- sunset
- the big sleep
- crash
- downfall
- fall
- (the) bane
- (the) end
- humankind
- humanity
- mankind
- defunction
- sleep of the just
Antonyms
Forms of mortality
| plural | mortalities |
|---|
Origin of mortality
From Old French mortalite, from Latin mortālitās, from mortālis (“relating to death”), from mors (“death”); equivalent to mortal + -ity.
Words formed from mortality
Phrases with mortality
Questions about mortality
- What does mortality mean?
- Mortality means the state of being susceptible to death.
- What is mortality in Hindi?
- Mortality in Hindi is मरण (maraṇ). See Mortality meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use mortality in a sentence?
- “[…] Thy sense is clogg’d with dull mortality; / They spirit fetter’d with the bond of clay: / Open thine eyes and see.”
- What part of speech is mortality?
- Mortality is a noun.
- How do you pronounce mortality?
- Mortality is pronounced /mɔɹˈtælɪti/ (US).
- What is the plural of mortality?
- The plural of mortality is mortalities.
Words near mortality in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mortality (page history and authors); मरण (Hindi) (page history and authors); mortality (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); موت (Urdu) (page history and authors); নশ্বরতা (Bengali) (page history and authors); mortality (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); ಮರಣ (Kannada) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-mortality.ogg.
Cite this entry: “mortality.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mortality. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.