Immortal

How to spell immortal

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce immortal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does immortal mean?

1. adjectiveLiving or lasting forever, never dying or fading.
2. nounA being that never dies, or a person whose fame is expected to endure forever.

Immortal in a sentence

• adjective

  The ancient myths described gods who were immortal and beyond the reach of death.

• noun

  In the legend the hero was granted a place among the immortal who dwell on the mountain.

• adjective

  No human body is immortal, however carefully it is cared for.

• noun

  Critics ranked the composer as one of the true immortal of European music.

Where does immortal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin immortalis, meaning 'not subject to death', which was built from the prefix in- 'not' and mortalis 'liable to die'. That adjective in turn rests on the noun mors (stem mort-), the plain Latin word for 'death', the same root that survives in 'mortal', 'mortuary', and 'mortgage'. English took the word up in the late 1300s, often used of gods and the soul, and the older spelling of the prefix in- shifted to im- because the following m made it easier to pronounce, a regular Latin assimilation. That doubled 'mm' is the spelling trap: writers who think of 'mortal' with a single front consonant can forget that the negative prefix supplies a second m. The link back to mort, 'death', is the useful memory hook, since 'immortal' literally means 'deathless'.

How the word is built

• im- (not)
• mort (death)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)