mort

plural morts

1. countableuncountableDeath; especially, the death of game in hunting.

   If you did the wrong thing at the mort or the undoing, for instance, you were bent over the body of the dead beast and smacked with the flat side of a sword.

   1958, Terence Hanbury White, chapter I, in The Once and Future King, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, book I (The Sword in the Stone)

2. countableuncountableA note sounded on a horn at the death of a deer.

   The sportsman then sounded a treble mort.

   1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC

3. ScotlandUKcountabledialectaluncountableThe skin of a sheep or lamb that has died of disease.
4. countableuncountablecard gamesA variety of dummy whist for three players.
5. countableuncountablecard gamesThe exposed or dummy hand of cards in the game of mort.

plural morts

1. A great quantity or number.

   1937 (written, first published in 1949), J. R. R. Tolkien, Farmer Giles of Ham As it was, he still had a mort of treasure at home in his cave.

   2 more examples

   a mort of water

   1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 63, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC

   Full o’ sut this chimney is. Ain’t been swep’ for a mort o’ years I reckon.

   1937, Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

plural morts

1. InternetinformalA player in a multi-user dungeon who does not have special administrator privileges and whose character can be killed.

plural morts

1. A three-year-old salmon.

plural morts · alternative mot · alternative mott

1. UKobsoletethieves' cantA woman; a female.

   Male gypsies all, not a mort among them.

   1621, Ben Jonson, The Gypsies Metamorphosed

   3 more examples

   "Yes, master! I and my mort worships something besides good ale; don't we, Sue?" and then he leered at the mort, who leered at him[…].

   1862, George Borrow, Wild Wales

   KINCHIN-MORTS, the Twenty-seventh and last Order of the Canting Crew, being girls of a year or two old whom the Morts (their Mothers) carry at their Backs in Slates (Sheets) […].

   1896, John Stephen Farmer, Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present, page 109

   With woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling mort.

   1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 3: Proteus]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part I [Telemachia], page 47

   Synonyms: woman

plural Morts

1. A surname.
2. A diminutive of the male given names Mortimer and Morton.