noun · 9 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Pronunciation
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General-American:/mɔɹˈtælɪti/
US:Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.
CMU ARPABET:M AO0 R T AE1 L AH0 T IY0
Digits mark lexical stress: 1 primary, 2 secondary, 0 unstressed.
1
noun
Meaning 1
The state or quality of being mortal.
The state of being susceptible to death.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: countable, uncountable
Examples
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.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: immortality
2
noun
Meaning 2
The state or quality of being mortal.
The quality of being punishable by death.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: archaic, countable, uncountable
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
3
noun
Meaning 3
The state or quality of being mortal.
The quality of causing death.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: archaic, countable, uncountable
Examples
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.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: deadliness, lethality
Antonyms: none provided
4
noun
Meaning 4
The number of deaths; and, usually and especially, the number of deaths per time unit (usually per year), expressed as a rate.
Deaths resulting from an event (such as a war, epidemic or disaster).
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: countable, uncountable
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
5
noun
Meaning 5
The number of deaths; and, usually and especially, the number of deaths per time unit (usually per year), expressed as a rate.
The number of deaths per given unit of population over a given period of time.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract