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mortal

adjective · noun · adverb

Simple meaning

Susceptible to death by aging, sickness, injury.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

mawrtuhl

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈmɔɹtəl

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Susceptible to death by aging, sickness, injury, or wound; not immortal.

  2. Causing death; deadly, fatal, killing, lethal (now only of wounds, injuries etc.).

  3. Subject to death

  4. religionof a sin

    Causing spiritual death.

  5. Of or relating to the time of death.

  6. Punishable by death.

noun

  1. A human being

  2. A human; someone susceptible to death.

adverb

  1. colloquial

    Mortally; enough to cause death.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Susceptible to death by aging, sickness, injury, or wound; not immortal.

Used this way, mortal is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It carries more force than its gentler alternatives. It turns up most in personal or emotional discussion and literature or storytelling contexts.

Emotional tone
Negative
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Strong
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Serious and weighty
Usage feel
Everyday but emotionally strong

Where it naturally appears

  • Personal/emotional discussion
  • Literature/storytelling

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use mortal

  • “All living things are mortal and will eventually die.”adjective

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Susceptible / causing

mortal wound

Human

mortal body

Other combinations

mortal sinmortal remainsmortal enemymortal combatmortal lifemortal blow

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • mortuaryadjectiveDerived adjective

    Related to Susceptible to death by aging, sickness, injury, or wound.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • mortal sinnounCompound term

    An unpardonable sin entailing a total loss of grace.

  • mortal enemynounCompound term

    An enemy who wants to kill you.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • mortalitynounRelated term

    The quality or state of being mortal.

Related Words

Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: susceptible to death by aging or sickness or injury

human

Antonyms

adjective

Sense: susceptible to death by aging or sickness or injury

immortal

noun

Sense: human being

immortal

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.