From Latin 'mortalitas' (condition of death) — entered English during the Black Death, when the concept became concrete.
The state of being subject to death; the death rate in a given population or from a particular cause; death on a large scale.
From Latin mortalitas (state of being subject to death), from mortalis (subject to death, human), from mors, mortis (death). The PIE root is *mor- or *mr- (to die), seen in Sanskrit marana (death), Greek brotos (mortal, originally *mr-otos), Armenian meranim (I die), and Lithuanian mirti (to die). Latin distinguished mors (the event or personification of death) from letum (destruction
The word 'mortality' gained a chilling new prominence during the London Bills of Mortality — weekly death tallies published from 1603 onward. John Graunt's analysis of these bills in 1662, 'Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality,' is considered the founding document of both demography and epidemiology. The word thus stands at the birth