Language Of Confusion: Mortal Thoughts, Redux, Part I

Way back during the first Halloween I decided to etymologize words related to mortality because it felt vaguely Halloween related. And now I’m doing it again.
 
Mortal showed up in the late fourteenth century, meaning deadly or destructive to life, coming from the Old French mortel and classical Latin mortalis, which is just mortal. It’s from the Proto Indo European root mer-, to rub away or harm, the origin of a bunch of other words, some of which are related to death, some of which are not. That’s the reason this is going to be multiple parts. There are some weird ones in here we definitely need to look at.
 
Mortify showed up in the late fourteenth century as mortifien, to kill or destroy the life of. Yeah. In the fifteenth century, it took on a religious sense of “subdue the flesh by abstinence and discipline” (yikes), and then by the seventeenth century it started to mean humiliate. Which… I can kind of see that evolution. Anyway, it comes from the Late Latin mortificare, put to death, from the classical Latin mors, death, and that’s from mer-. Mortify—embarrassed to death!
 
Morbid showed up in the mid seventeenth century meaning the nature of a disease, then referring to mental states in the mid nineteenth century. It comes from the classical Latin morbus, disease, and that is thought to be from mori, to die, which is from mer-.
 
Murder is unsurprisingly old, having shown up in the fourteenth century. It comes from the Old English morþor, great sin or crime. That’s from the Proto Germanic murthran, which is from mer-, meaning murder came to English through its Germanic family instead of its Latin one. How appropriate.
 
Now we’re going to look at a word that I didn’t do last time, probably out of laziness. Mortuary showed up in the late fourteenth century, but back then it meant a gift to a minister on the death of a parishioner. It then meant a funeral service in the mid fifteenth century, and then by 1865 a place where the dead were kept, because that was fancier than what they used to call it: deadhouse. Mortuary comes to us from the Anglo French mortuarie, Medieval Latin mortuarium, from the Late Latin mortuaries, and classical Latin mortuus, dead, and that’s from mori, which is from mer-. Seriously, they paid the minister? I mean, I get it if it’s to pay for the funeral. They’re not just giving the priest money because someone died, right?
 
Finally today, the word I’m sure you’ll all be thrilled to see: mortgage. It showed up in the late fourteenth century, although back then it was just morgage because we never pronounce the T anyway. It’s from the Old French mortgage, which literally meant “dead pledge”. The mort- is from mori, while the -gage is from wage. Never has a word felt more accurate.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
Dictionary of Medieval Latin
Orbis Latinus

Language Of Confusion: Mortality

Time for another redo! I definitely didn’t do these words justice when I did them the first time in April of 2011. And what better way to finish the month off than by looking at mortal words?
 
Mortal showed up in the late fourteenth century, coming from the Old French mortel and classical Latin mortalis, which is just mortal. It’s from the noun mors, death, which can be traced to the Proto Indo European mr-o, to die. That’s from the root word mer-, rub away or harm, or just die. It shows up in a lot of words, some of which make sense, some of which are like, what, really???
 
Morbid of course is related, having shown up in the mid seventeenth century. It comes from the classical Latin morbidus, which means sick or diseased, from mori, to die, and that’s from mer-. Mortify showed up earlier, in the late fourteenth century as mortifien and meaning to kill or destroy the life of. It began to be used in a religious context in the early fifteenth century, where it referred to “subduing the flesh” by abstinence and discipline, and from there turned into humiliate sometime in the late seventeenth century. The word is from the Old French mortefiier, destroy or punish, from the Late Latin mortificare, to kill. And that one’s also from mors, which we already know the story of.
 
Mortgage is related, although that probably won’t surprise anyone who has one. It showed up in the late fourteenth century as morgage, from the Old French morgage, which is literally mort gaige, dead pledge. Mort is of course from mori, so that’s where we get that.
 
Now for everybody’s favorite fun time activity, murder. It showed up in the fourteenth century as either murder or morþer, from the Old English morðer, which is just murder. It’s from the Proto Germanic murthran, and that’s from mer-. So while everything else is Latin, murder is Germanic, but they still come from the same place.

So that’s the mortal words, new and improved. I should probably update my etymology list to show the better version.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Orbis Latinus