Definition of "mortality"
mortality
noun
countable and uncountable, plural mortalities
The state or quality of being mortal.
The state of being susceptible to death.
Quotations
[…] her minde remembreth her mortalitie,what so is fayrest shall to earth returne.
1595, Edmunde Spenser [i.e., Edmund Spenser], “(please specify the sonnet number or title)”, in Amoretti and Epithalamion. […], London: […] [Peter Short] for William Ponsonby; reprinted in Amoretti and Epithalamion (The Noel Douglas Replicas), London: Noel Douglas […], 1927,
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
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.
1714, Alexander Pope, letter to John Gay in Letters of Mr. Pope, and Several Eminent Persons, London, 1735, Volume 2, p. 208
“ […] 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
(archaic) The quality of causing death.
Quotations
[...] Hold therefore Angelo:In our remoue, be thou at full, our selfe:Mortallitie and Mercie in ViennaLiue in thy tongue, and heart: Old EscalusThough 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, [Act I, scene i]
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).
Quotations
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.
1928, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015
(biology, ecology, demography, insurance) The number of deaths per given unit of population over a given period of time.
Quotations
Some of the objects of enquiry would be […] what was the comparative mortality among the children of the most distressed part of the community, and those who lived rather more at their ease […]
1798, Thomas Malthus, chapter 2, in An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, pages 32–33
By studying mortality rates and pollution statistics in 90 Chinese cities, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Israel and China discovered that air pollution from burning coal in north China, defined as above the Huai River, with a population of around 500 million people, was 55% higher than in the south.
2013 July 9, Calum MacLeod, “In China, air pollution report brings despair, humor”, in USA Today, archived from the original on 10 July 2013
(figuratively) Death.
Quotations
Why am I mockt with death, and length’nd outTo deathless pain? how gladly would I meetMortalitie my sentence, and be EarthInsensible,
1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, lines 774-777
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.
1728, John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, Dublin: George Risk et al., Act II, Scene 11, p. 37
(figuratively, archaic) Mortals collectively.
Quotations
It is not fit Mortalitie should knoweWhat his eternall prouidence decreed,
1604, Michael Drayton, Moyses in a Map of His Miracles, London, Book 1, pp. 8-9