Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The quality or condition of being mortal.
  • noun Mortals considered as a group; the human race.
  • noun Death, especially of large numbers; heavy loss of life.
  • noun Death rate.
  • noun The rate of failure or loss.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The condition or character of being mortal, or of being subject to death, or to the necessity of dying.
  • noun Death.
  • noun Frequency of death; numerousness of deaths; deaths in relation to their numbers: as, a time of great mortality.
  • noun Specifically, the number of deaths in proportion to population: usually stated as the number of deaths per thousand of population.
  • noun The duration of human life.
  • noun Humanity; human nature; the human race.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The condition or quality of being mortal; subjection to death or to the necessity of dying.
  • noun Human life; the life of a mortal being.
  • noun Those who are, or that which is, mortal; the human race; humanity; human nature.
  • noun Death; destruction.
  • noun The whole sum or number of deaths in a given time or a given community; also, the proportion of deaths to population, or to a specific number of the population; death rate
  • noun See under Bill.
  • noun a mathematical relation between the numbers living at different ages, so that from a given large number of persons alive at one age, it can be computed what number are likely to survive a given number of years.
  • noun a table exhibiting the average relative number of persons who survive, or who have died, at the end of each year of life, out of a given number supposed to have been born at the same time.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The condition of being susceptible to death
  • noun The death rate of a population

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the quality or state of being mortal
  • noun the ratio of deaths in an area to the population of that area; expressed per 1000 per year

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From mortal +‎ -ity.

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Examples

  • "Socioeconomic disparity in mortality is pervasive, and it continues to increase," said Ahmedin Jemal, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society who lead the study.

    research studies 2009

  • The assertion of a 1% reduction in mortality is not necessarily orthogonal to a 41-91% reduction in hospitalizations.

    Consider the Source II 2010

  • The assertion of a 1% reduction in mortality is not necessarily orthogonal to a 41-91% reduction in hospitalizations.

    Archive 2010-01-01 2010

  • Living standards are now independent of population levels, so any reduction in mortality is an unalloyed blessing.

    The Malthusian Trap « Isegoria 2008

  • Such comparisons have shown a dramatic difference in mortality between these two groups: study after study has found that people who get a flu shot in the fall are about half as likely to die that winter — from any cause — as people who do not.

    Does the Vaccine Matter? 2009

  • ‘The one human flaw, mortality, is the one thing that makes you whole.’

    Homemade Hollywood is Up for a Rondo Award! | Fan Cinema Today 2009

  • I realize the title of my report sounds bizarre, but before you label me insane, consider the following well-established fact -- The Telemark Polyp Study demonstrated a 57% increase in mortality among patients screened for colon cancer vis-à-vis unscreened controls.

    Snow Day! 'Snow day for a colonoscopy.... 2009

  • Unfortunately, there are a lot of miscarriages, and infant-maternal mortality is uncomfortably high (certainly higher than one would expect in the American heartland).

    intertribal: people bleed from terrible places, for terrible reasons. intertribal 2010

  • Generalized weakness, malaise, loss of coordination and respiratory arrest may be present; mortality is close to 50percent in some studies.

    Fish poisonings and envenomations 2010

  • For example, while he allows that, in mortality rates, the inner-city men at age 68 to 70 resembled the Terman and Harvard cohorts at 78 to 80, he says that most of the difference can be explained by less education, more obesity, and greater abuse of alcohol and cigarettes.

    What Makes Us Happy? 2009

Comments

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  • Men at My Father's Funeral by William Matthews

    The ones his age who shook my hand

    on their way out sent fear along

    my arm like heroin. These weren't

    men mute about their feelings,

    or what's a body language for?

    and I, the glib one, who'd stood

    with my back to my father's body

    and praised the heart that attacked him?

    I'd made my stab at elegy,

    the flesh made word: the very spit

    in my mouth was sour with ruth

    and eloquence. What could be worse?

    Silence, the anthem of my father's

    new country. And thus this babble,

    like a dial tone, from our bodies.

    December 10, 2006

  • The Dead by Billy Collins

    The dead are always looking down on us, they say.

    while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,

    they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven

    as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

    They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,

    and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,

    drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,

    they think we are looking back at them,

    which makes them lift their oars and fall silent

    and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.

    December 10, 2006

  • Take mortality away and motivation loses its ... motivation. Thus vampires spend a lot of time lounging around and staring out the window and finding they can't be arsed. From "The Last Werewolf" by Glen Duncan.

    February 28, 2012