TransWikia.com

What does the word "mortability" exactly mean?

English Language & Usage Asked by Patrick D on July 5, 2021

I’ve come across quite a few medical articles in which the word "mortability" appears.
e.g. In the National Library of Medicine : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=mortability.
As I strongly doubt that this word has ever existed, I’ve looked up a couple of dictionaries on line and at home, only to discover that none of them accepts such an entry and, as a consequence, I haven’t been able to find any definition so far. Can anyone help?

One Answer

It's a "nonce-word" (a "one-off" neologism that in this case may have been coined more than once and/or occasionally copied). Here it is in the 1928 publication Journal of State Medicine - Volume 36

It is important to distinguish between liability to attack — infectability — and liability to die as the result of that attack - mortability as I should like to term it

The word infectability is perfectly valid, but I doubt you'd find mortability in any dictionary. Clearly it's based on mortality, with the specific sense of (measurable) "death rate" / "chances of dying".


Thanks to @rajah9 for pointing out that the "correct" term (as defined in the full Oxford English Dictionary) is...

morbidity 1b. Medicine
The rate of disease, or a specific disease, in a population; (emphasis mine)
= morbidity rate

And here's a Google Books link showing just how often the "equivalent" terms mortability and morbidity occur in close proximity within the same text (surprisingly often, I would say). One almost gets the impression many medical writers would like the former term to have greater currency. So they keep writing it (alongside the "correct, explanatory" word "morbidity"). But dictionary-makers keep ignoring them!

Answered by FumbleFingers on July 5, 2021

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question

Get help from others!

© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP