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Meaning & use

mortality

noun·Academic

Last updated

UK/mɔːˈtæləti/
US/mɔːrˈtæləti/

Meanings

  1. noununcountable

    The fact that every living person will eventually die.

    Grammar: Takes no article in this sense: He was reminded of his own mortality.

    Patterns

    • face your own mortality
    • awareness of mortality

    The scare made her think about her own mortality.

    Poets have long written about human mortality.

    Turning ninety brought him face to face with mortality.

  2. noununcountabletechnical

    The number of deaths in a group or place over a certain period, or the rate at which people die.

    Grammar: Used in statistics and medicine: infant mortality, mortality rates.

    Patterns

    • mortality rate
    • mortality from something

    Infant mortality fell sharply after the clinic opened.

    The study measured mortality among older adults during the heatwave.

    Hospitals track the mortality rate for each surgery.

Common combinations

mortality rate
The mortality rate dropped after the vaccine was introduced.
infant mortality
Better care has reduced infant mortality worldwide.
face your own mortality
A health scare forced him to face his own mortality.
human mortality
The novel explores human mortality and loss.
reduce mortality
Clean water helped reduce mortality in the region.
mortality figures
The ministry released new mortality figures on Monday.

Synonyms and how they differ

death rate
Death rate is a plain phrase for the statistical meaning, while mortality is the formal word used in studies.
fatality
A fatality is a single death caused by an accident or disaster, whereas mortality describes deaths as a general condition or rate.
transience
Transience means the fact that things do not last, so it is wider than mortality, which concerns human death.
impermanence
Impermanence is a more philosophical word about all things passing away.

Opposites

immortality

Word family

mortal adjective
certain to die, or causing death
immortal adjective
living or lasting forever
immortality noun
the ability to live or be remembered forever
mortally adverb
in a way that causes death, or extremely
morbidity noun
the rate of disease in a population

Commonly confused: mortality or morbidity? mortality or morality?

mortality vs morbidity

Morbidity refers to illness or disease rates, whereas mortality refers to death or death rates.

mortality vs morality

Morality is the sense of right and wrong; mortality is about death. The words look alike but have unrelated meanings.

Practice

The report compared ______ rates among patients before and after the new treatment.

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