mortality

What it means

1. The state or quality of being mortal.
   1. countableuncountableThe 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

      4 more examples

      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

      1714, Alexander Pope, letter to John Gay in Letters of Mr. Pope, and Several Eminent Persons, London, 1735, Volume 2, p. 208, I have been perpetually troubled with sickness of late, which has made me so melancholy that the Immortality of the Soul has been my constant Speculation, as the Mortality of my Body my constant Plague.

      “[…] 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 the University of Cambridge, Cambridge: Macmillan, published 1859, page 156

      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

      Antonyms: immortality

   2. archaiccountableuncountableThe 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

   3. archaiccountableuncountableThe quality of causing death.

      1685, Thomas Willis, Tract of Fevers, Chapter 15, in The London Practice of Physick, London: Thomas Basset and William Crooke, p. 626, […] 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.

      1 more example

      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] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]

      Synonyms: deadliness, lethality

In a sentence

[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

Where it comes from

1. Latinmortālitās
2. Old Frenchmortalite
3. Englishmortality

From Old French mortalite, from Latin mortālitās, from mortālis (“relating to death”), from mors (“death”); equivalent to mortal + -ity.