different between mortality vs dead

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

English

Etymology

From Middle English ded, deed, from Old English d?ad, from Proto-West Germanic *daud, from Proto-Germanic *daudaz.

Compare West Frisian dead, dea, Dutch dood, German tot, Danish, Norwegian død, Norwegian Nynorsk daud.

Pronunciation

• enPR: d?d, IPA^(key): /d?d/
• Rhymes: -?d
• (West Country) IPA^(key): /di?d/

Adjective

dead (comparative deader, superlative deadest)

1. (usually not comparable) No longer living. (Also used as a noun.)
   • 1968, Ray Thomas, "Legend of a Mind", The Moody Blues, In Search of the Lost Chord.

   Have respect for the dead.

   The villagers are mourning their dead.

   The dead are always with us, in our hearts.

2. (usually not comparable) Devoid of life.
3. (hyperbolic) Figuratively, not alive; lacking life.
4. (of another person) So hated that they are absolutely ignored.

5. Doomed; marked for death (literally or as a hyperbole).
6. Without emotion.

7. Stationary; static.

8. Without interest to one of the senses; dull; flat.

9. Unproductive.

10. (not comparable, of a machine, device, or electrical circuit) Completely inactive; currently without power; without a signal.
11. (of a battery) Unable to emit power, being discharged (flat) or faulty.
12. (not comparable) Broken or inoperable.

13. (not comparable) No longer used or required.
    • 1984, Winston Smock, Technical Writing for Beginners, page 148:

      No mark of any kind should ever be made on a dead manuscript.

    • 2017, Zhaomo Yang and Brian Johannesmeyer, "Dead Store Elimination (Still) Considered Harmful":

      In this paper, we survey the set of techniques found in the wild that are intended to prevent data-scrubbing operations from being removed during dead store elimination.

14. (engineering) Not imparting motion or power by design.

15. (not comparable, sports) Not in play.

16. (not comparable, golf, of a golf ball) Lying so near the hole that the player is certain to hole it in the next stroke.
17. (not comparable, baseball, slang, 1800s) Tagged out.
18. (not comparable) Full and complete.

19. (not comparable) Exact.

20. Experiencing pins and needles (paresthesia).

    After sitting on my hands for a while, my arms became dead.

21. Constructed so as not to transmit sound; soundless.

22. (obsolete) Bringing death; deadly.
23. (law) Cut off from the rights of a citizen; deprived of the power of enjoying the rights of property.

24. (rare, especially religion, often with "to") Indifferent to, no longer subject to or ruled by (sin, guilt, pleasure, etc).
    • 1839, William Jenks, The Comprehensive Commentary on the Holy Bible: Acts-Revelation, page 361:

      He was dead to the law. Whatever account others might make of it, yet, for his part, he was dead to it. […] But though he was thus dead to the law, yet he […] was far from thinking himself discharged from his duty to God' on the contrary, he was dead to the law, that he might live unto God.

    • 1849, Robert Haldane, Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, page 255:

      But he died to the guilt of sin—to the guilt of his people's sins which he had taken upon him; and they, dying with him, as is above declared, die to sin precisely in the same sense in which he died to it. […] He was not justified from it till his resurrection, but from that moment he was dead to it. When he shall appear the second time, it will be "without sin."

Usage notes

• In Middle and Early Modern English, the phrase is dead was more common where the present perfect form has died is common today. Example:

1611, King James Bible

I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. (Gal. 2:21)

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:dead

Antonyms

• alive
• living

Translations

Adverb

dead (not comparable)

1. (degree, informal, colloquial) Exactly.

   dead right; dead level; dead flat; dead straight; dead left

   He hit the target dead in the centre.

2. (degree, informal, colloquial) Very, absolutely, extremely.

   dead wrong; dead set; dead serious; dead drunk; dead broke; dead earnest; dead certain; dead slow; dead sure; dead simple; dead honest; dead accurate; dead easy; dead scared; dead solid; dead black; dead white; dead empty

3. Suddenly and completely.

   He stopped dead.

4. (informal) As if dead.

   dead tired; dead quiet; dead asleep; dead pale; dead cold; dead still

   • I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy.

Translations

Noun

dead (uncountable)

2. (often with "the") Time when coldness, darkness, or stillness is most intense.

   The dead of night. The dead of winter.

3. (collective, with the) Those persons who are dead.

Translations

Noun

dead (plural deads)

2. (Britain) (usually in the plural) Sterile mining waste, often present as many large rocks stacked inside the workings.

Verb

dead (third-person singular simple present deads, present participle deading, simple past and past participle deaded)

1. (transitive) To prevent by disabling; stop.
   • 1826, The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Edward Reynolds, Lord Bishop of Norwich, collected by Edward Reynolds, Benedict Riveley, and Alexander Chalmers. pp. 227. London: B. Holdsworth.

     “What a man should do, when finds his natural impotency dead him in spiritual works”

2. (transitive) To make dead; to deaden; to deprive of life, force, or vigour.
3. (Britain, transitive, slang) To kill.

Related terms

• deaden
• deadliness
• deadly
• deadness
• death
• undead

Derived terms

References

• dead at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• Dade, Edda, adde, dade

French

Etymology

From English dead.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /d?d/

Verb

dead

1. (slang, anglicism) to succeed (in doing something well, "killing it")

Usage notes

The verb is left unconjugated: il dead, il a dead. Usage is limited to the present, as well as an infinitive or a past participle.

Old English

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *daud.

Cognate with Old Frisian d?d (West Frisian dead), Old Saxon d?d, Dutch dood, Old High German t?t (German tot), Old Norse dauðr (Swedish död), Gothic ???????????????????? (dauþs).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dæ???d/

Adjective

d?ad

1. dead

Declension

Derived terms

• d?adl??
• healfd?ad

Related terms

• d?aþ

Descendants

• Middle English: ded, deed
  • Scots: dede, deed, deid
  • English: dead
  • Yola: deed

See also

• steorfan

Volapük

Etymology

Borrowed from English dead or death (with the "th" changed to "d").

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [de?ad]

Noun

dead (nominative plural deads)

1. death, state being dead, state of death

Declension

Derived terms

• ädeadöl
• bludamodeadön
• dadeadön
• deadam
• deadamadel
• deadan
• deadanöp
• deadik
• deadio
• deadöf
• deadöfan
• deadöfik
• deadöl
• deadölan
• deadön
• deid
• deidöl
• deidön
• drakideidan
• drakihideidan
• drakijideidan
• edeadöl
• edeadön
• hideadan
• hideadöfan
• hideadölan
• jideadan
• jideadöfan
• jideadölan
• pedeidöl