Mortal

How to spell mortal

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mortal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mortal mean?

1. adjectiveSubject to death; unable to live forever, or capable of causing death.
2. nounA human being, regarded as one who must eventually die.

Mortal in a sentence

• adjective

  The soldier suffered a mortal wound on the battlefield.

• noun

  No ordinary mortal could have survived such a fall.

• adjective

  Ancient myths often described gods who envied mortal beings for their short lives.

• noun

  The legend claimed a goddess once fell in love with a humble mortal.

Where does mortal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Mortal comes from the Latin word mortalis, meaning 'subject to death', which was built on mors, the Latin noun for 'death' (its stem being mort-). The underlying idea is the simple, sobering fact that all living things must eventually die, and the word carried that sense of being perishable and finite. English picked it up through Old French in the 1300s, both as an adjective describing creatures that can die and as a noun for a human being viewed as one of those creatures. The same mort- root for death sits inside a whole family of familiar words, including mortify, mortuary, mortgage, and the old phrase rigor mortis. Because the spelling preserves that root cleanly, remembering the link to 'mort' meaning death is the surest way to keep the single t and the -al ending in place.

How the word is built

• mort (death, from Latin mors)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)