Other forms: mortals
Mortal means bound to die, as all human beings are. We are all mortal, mortal beings, mortal life.
As a noun, a mortal is a human being, particularly when set against gods or immortals in myth: the gods and the mortals. It also means causing death or extremely serious: a mortal wound, mortal danger, mortal enemy. Mortal sin in Catholic teaching is one grave enough to cut a soul off from grace, against a venial sin. Note mortality, which means both the state of being mortal and the death rate.
1adjectivemortalBound to die.
“The whole book is about the fact that we are mortal.”
2adjectivecausingCausing death, or extremely serious.
“The soldiers were in mortal danger as the enemy surrounded them.”
3nounhumanA human being, as against a god.
“The gods interfere and the mortals suffer for it.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
mortal is a quality of being subject to death.
Latin mortalis comes from mors, death — the same root as mortgage, literally a dead pledge, and mortuary and mortify. English is full of the Latin word for death and hardly notices it.
Proto-Indo-European
*mer-
Latin
mortālis
Old French
mortal
Middle English
mortal
English, today
mortal
Built from
From Middle English mortal, mortel, from Old French mortal, and their source Latin mortālis, from mors (“death”). In this sense, displaced native deadly, from Old English dēadlīċ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA