Mortality

How to spell mortality

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce mortality

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mortality mean?

1. nounThe condition of being mortal, that is, certain eventually to die.
2. nounThe number of deaths in a given population, often expressed as a rate over a period of time.

Mortality in a sentence

• The diagnosis forced him to confront his own mortality.

• Improved sanitation sharply reduced infant mortality in the region.

• Reaching fifty often makes people reflect on their mortality.

• The study compared mortality between smokers and non-smokers.

Where does mortality come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin noun mortalitas, which meant 'the condition of being subject to death', and that noun was built on mortalis, the adjective 'liable to die', from mors (in its stem form morti-), the plain Latin word for 'death'. English took it in through Old French mortalite during the 1300s, when it often referred grimly to large-scale loss of life during outbreaks of plague. From there it broadened to cover both the abstract fact that all living things must die and, more technically, the rate at which deaths occur in a population. The same death root survives in everyday relatives such as 'mortal', 'mortuary', 'immortal', and even 'mortgage', which literally meant a 'dead pledge'. The spelling stays close to the Latin: keep the silent visual logic of mort plus -ality, and resist the urge to write a double letter, since there is only one t.

How the word is built

• mort (death)
• -al (relating to)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix denoting state or quality)