different between fatal vs mortality

English

Etymology

From Middle French fatal, from Latin f?t?lis (“fatal”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?fe?t?l/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): [?fe?.???]
• Rhymes: -e?t?l

Adjective

fatal (not comparable)

1. Proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny.
2. Foreboding death or great disaster.
3. Causing death or destruction.
4. (computing) Causing a sudden end to the running of a program.

Synonyms

• (proceeding from fate): inevitable, necessary
• (foreboding death): terminal
• (causing death): calamitous, deadly, destructive, mortal

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

fatal (plural fatals)

1. A fatality; an event that leads to death.
   • 1969, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Education, Hearings (page 90)

     For this same period there have been four fatals and 44 nonfatals in gassy mines.

   • 1999, Flying Magazine (volume 126, number 4, April 1999, page 15)

     The best accident rate in general aviation is in corporate/executive flying at 0.17 per 100000 hours for fatals and .50 for total accidents.

2. (computing) A fatal error; a failure that causes a program to terminate.

Anagrams

• A flat, A-flat, a flat, a-flat, aflat

Catalan

Etymology

From Latin f?t?lis (“fatal”).

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Central) IPA^(key): /f??tal/
• (Valencian) IPA^(key): /fa?tal/
• Homophone: fetal (Balearic, Central)
• Rhymes: -al

Adjective

fatal (masculine and feminine plural fatals)

1. fatal

Derived terms

• fatalisme
• fatalista
• fatalment

Related terms

• fatalitat

Further reading

• “fatal” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

Danish

Etymology

From Latin f?t?lis (“fatal”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fata?l/, [fa?t?æ??l]

Adjective

fatal

1. fatal

Inflection

Synonyms

• skæbnesvanger

Derived terms

• fatalisme

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin f?t?lis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fa.tal/
• Rhymes: -al

Adjective

fatal (feminine singular fatale, masculine plural fatals, feminine plural fatales)

1. fatal (due to fate)
2. fatal (causing death)

Derived terms

• fatalement
• fatalisme
• fataliste
• femme fatale

Related terms

• fatalité

Further reading

• “fatal” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

German

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin f?t?lis.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -a?l

Adjective

fatal (comparative fataler, superlative am fatalsten)

1. fatal

Declension

Indonesian

Etymology

From Dutch fataal, from Middle French fatal, from Latin f?t?lis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?fatal]
• Hyphenation: fa?tal

Adjective

fatal

1. fatal,
   1. causing death or destruction.

      Synonym: celaka

   2. proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny; inevitable.

Further reading

• “fatal” in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI) Daring, Jakarta: Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa, Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Republik Indonesia, 2016.

Middle French

Etymology

First known attestation 1380, borrowed from Latin f?t?lis

Adjective

fatal m (feminine singular fatale, masculine plural fatals, feminine plural fatales)

1. fatal (due to fate)

References

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

From Latin fatalis

Adjective

fatal (neuter singular fatalt, definite singular and plural fatale)

1. fatal

References

• “fatal” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

From Latin fatalis

Adjective

fatal (neuter singular fatalt, definite singular and plural fatale)

1. fatal

References

• “fatal” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Portuguese

Etymology

From Latin f?t?lis (“fatal”).

Pronunciation

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /f?.?ta?/
• Hyphenation: fa?tal

Adjective

fatal m or f (plural fatais, comparable)

1. fatal
2. terrible, very bad

Derived terms

• fatalismo
• fatalista
• fatalmente

Related terms

• fatalidade

Further reading

• “fatal” in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa.

Romanian

Etymology

From French fatal, from Latin fatalis.

Adjective

fatal m or n (feminine singular fatal?, masculine plural fatali, feminine and neuter plural fatale)

1. fatal

Declension

Spanish

Etymology

From Latin f?t?lis (“fatal”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /fa?tal/, [fa?t?al]
• Rhymes: -al

Adjective

fatal (plural fatales)

1. fatal
2. terrible, very bad

Derived terms

Related terms

• fatalidad

Adverb

fatal

1. very badly, terribly

Further reading

• “fatal” in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014.

English

Etymology

From Old French mortalite, from Latin mort?lit?s, from mort?lis (“relating to death”), from mors (“death”); equivalent to mortal +? -ity.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /m???tæl?ti/

Noun

mortality (countable and uncountable, plural mortalities)

1. The state or quality of being mortal.
   1. The state of being susceptible to death.

      Antonym: immortality

      • 1595, Edmund Spenser, Sonnet 13 in Amoretti and Epithalamion, London: William Ponsonby,^[1]

        […] her minde remembreth her mortalitie,

        what so is fayrest shall to earth returne.

      • 1609, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 65,^[2]

        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?

      • 1714, Alexander Pope, letter to John Gay in Letters of Mr. Pope, and Several Eminent Persons, London, 1735, Volume 2, p. 208,^[3]

        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.

      • 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, 1859, p. 156,^[4]

        “ […] Thy sense is clogg’d with dull mortality;

        They spirit fetter’d with the bond of clay:

        Open thine eyes and see.”

      • 1969, Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Random House, Chapter 2, p. 157,^[5]

        But on that onerous day [of the funeral], oppressed beyond relief, my own mortality was borne in upon me on sluggish tides of doom.

   2. (archaic) The quality of being punishable by death.
      • 1681, John Dryden, The Spanish Fryar, London: Richard Tonson and Jacob Tonson, Act II, p. 28,^[6]

        […] actions of Charity do alleviate, as I may say, and take off from the Mortality of the Sin.

   3. (archaic) The quality of causing death.

      Synonyms: deadliness, lethality

      • 1685, Thomas Willis, Tract of Fevers, Chapter 15, in The London Practice of Physick, London: Thomas Basset and William Crooke, p. 626,^[7]

        […] 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.

2. The number of deaths.
   1. Deaths resulting from an event (such as a war, epidemic or disaster).

      Synonym: casualty rate

      • 1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, London: E. Nutt et al., p. 200,^[8]

        […] 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.

      • 1853, Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth, London: Chapman and Hall, Volume 3, Chapter 9, p. 242,^[9]

        […] the doctors stood aghast at the swift mortality among the untended sufferers […]

      • 1928, Virginia Woolf, Orlando, Penguin, 1942, Chapter 1, p. 23,^[10]

        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.

   2. (biology, ecology, demography, insurance) The number of deaths per given unit of population over a given period of time.

      Synonyms: death rate, mortality rate

      • 1776, Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, Volume 1, Book 1, Chapter 8, p. 97,^[11]

        In foundling hospitals, and among the children brought up by parish charities the mortality is still greater than among those of the common people.

      • 1798, Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, London: J. Johnson, Chapter 2, pp. 32-33,^[12]

        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 […]

      • 1918, Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians, London: Chatto and Windus, “Florence Nightingale,” Chapter 3, p. 146,^[13]

        And, even in peace and at home, what was the sanitary condition of the Army? The mortality in the barracks was, she found, nearly double the mortality in civil life.

      • 1962, Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 8, p. 114,^[14]

        […] a drought year brought conditions especially favorable to the beetle and the mortality of elms went up 1000 per cent.

3. (figuratively) Death.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 9, lines 774-777,^[15]

     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,

   • 1728, John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, Dublin: George Risk et al., Act II, Scene 11, p. 37,^[16]

     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.

   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Fields, Chapter 10, p. 154,^[17]

     […] 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.

   • 1961, Joseph Heller, Catch-22, New York: Dell, 1962, Chapter 10, p. 112,^[18]

     […] the moldy odor of mortality hung wet in the air with the sulphurous fog […]

4. (figuratively, archaic) Mortals collectively.

   Synonyms: humankind, humanity, mankind

   • 1604, Michael Drayton, Moyses in a Map of His Miracles, London, Book 1, pp. 8-9,^[19]

     It is not fit Mortalitie should knowe

     What his eternall prouidence decreed,

   • c. 1615, George Chapman (translator), Homer’s Odysses, London: Nathaniel Butter, Book 23, p. 359,^[20]

     […] sleepe seiz’d his weary eye,

     That salues all care, to all mortality.

Derived terms

Related terms

• mortal

Translations