From Latin 'mortificare' (to make dead) — from ascetic self-denial to extreme embarrassment, humiliation as metaphorical death.
To cause someone to feel extremely embarrassed or humiliated; (in religious use) to subdue the body or its appetites through self-denial or discipline; (archaic) to cause tissue to die, to become gangrenous.
From Old French 'mortifier' (to destroy, kill, put to death), from Late Latin 'mortificāre' (to put to death, to kill), from Latin 'mors' (death) and 'facere' (to make, to do). Literally 'to make dead.' The religious sense — subduing bodily desires through ascetic practice — derives from the Pauline concept of 'mortifying the flesh' (Colossians 3:5). The modern
In cooking, 'to mortify' meat means to hang it until it begins to decompose slightly, tenderizing it through controlled decay. This culinary usage — attested from the sixteenth century — preserves the word's original medical meaning of tissue death. Game birds were traditionally mortified for days or even weeks