mortality

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   The state or quality of being mortal.

   • [H]er minde remembreth her mortalitie, / vvhat ſo is fayreſt ſhall to earth returne.
   • 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?
2. 2

   The number of deaths

   The number of deaths; and, usually and especially, the number of deaths per time unit (usually per year), expressed as a rate.

   • […] the Mortality was so great in the Yard or Alley, that there was no Body left to give Notice to the Buriers or Sextons, that there were any dead Bodies there to be bury’d.
   • […] the doctors stood aghast at the swift mortality among the untended sufferers […]
   • The Great Frost was, historians tell us, the most severe that has ever visited these islands. Birds froze in mid air and fell like stones to the ground. […] The mortality among sheep and cattle was enormous.
3. 3

   Death.

   • Why am I mockt with death, and length’nd out / To deathless pain? how gladly would I meet / Mortalitie my sentence, and be Earth / Insensible,
   • Learn to bear your Husband’s Death like a reasonable Woman. ’Tis not the fashion, now-a-days so much as to affect Sorrow upon these Occasions. No Woman would ever marry, if she had not the Chance of Mortality for a Release.
   • […] like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption.
4. ›+ 1 more definitionshow fewer

   1. 4

      Mortals collectively.

      • It is not fit Mortalitie should knowe / What his eternall prouidence decreed,
      • [S]leepe seiz’d his weary eye, / That salues all care, to all mortality.

The neighborhood

• neighbormortal