What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Mortal vs Ephemeral - What's the difference?

mortal | ephemeral | Synonyms |

As adjectives the difference between mortal and ephemeral

is that mortal is susceptible to death by aging, sickness, injury, or wound; not immortal while ephemeral is lasting for a short period of time.

As nouns the difference between mortal and ephemeral

is that mortal is a human; someone susceptible to death while ephemeral is something which lasts for a short period of time.

mortal

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Susceptible to death by aging, sickness, injury, or wound; not immortal.
  • * 1883 , (Robert Louis Stevenson), :
  • I was in mortal fear lest the captain should repent of his confessions and make an end of me.
  • Causing death; deadly, fatal, killing, lethal (now only of wounds, injuries etc.).
  • * 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , III.11:
  • Blyndfold he was; and in his cruell fist / A mortall bow and arrowes keene did hold […].
  • Fatally vulnerable; vital.
  • * Milton
  • Last of all, against himself he turns his sword, but missing the mortal place, with his poniard finishes the work.
  • Of or relating to the time of death.
  • * Alexander Pope
  • Safe in the hand of one disposing Power, / Or in the natal or the mortal hour.
  • Affecting as if with power to kill; deathly.
  • * Dryden
  • The nymph grew pale, and in a mortal fright.
  • * mortal enemy
  • Human; belonging to man, who is mortal.
  • mortal''' wit or knowledge; '''mortal power
  • * Milton
  • The voice of God / To mortal ear is dreadful.
  • Very painful or tedious; wearisome.
  • a sermon lasting two mortal hours
    (Sir Walter Scott)
  • (UK, slang) Very drunk; wasted; smashed.
  • Let's go out and get mortal !

    Derived terms

    * mortality * mortal sin

    Synonyms

    * (causing death) fatal, lethal, baneful

    Antonyms

    * (susceptible to death) immortal, everlasting * (of or relating to death) natal

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A human; someone susceptible to death.
  • :
  • *1596 , (William Shakespeare), (w, A Midsummer Night's Dream)
  • *:Lord what fools these mortals be!
  • *
  • *:But then I had the flintlock by me for protection. ¶ There were giants in the days when that gun was made; for surely no modern mortal could have held that mass of metal steady to his shoulder. The linen-press and a chest on the top of it formed, however, a very good gun-carriage; and, thus mounted, aim could be taken out of the window.
  • Antonyms

    * immortal

    ephemeral

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Something which lasts for a short period of time.
  • Synonyms

    * (short-lived) ephemeron

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Lasting for a short period of time.
  • * Vicesimus Knox
  • Esteem, lasting esteem, the esteem of good men, like himself, will be his reward, when the gale of ephemeral popularity shall have gradually subsided.
  • * Sir J. Stephen
  • sentences not of ephemeral , but of eternal, efficacy
  • * '>citation
  • It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral , because human, sorrows.
  • (biology) Existing for only one day, as with some flowers, insects, and diseases.
  • (geology, of a body of water) Usually dry, but filling with water for brief periods during and after precipitation.
  • * 1986 , W.H. Raymond, "Clinoptilolite Deposit in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, U.S.A.", in Y?ichi Murakami et al. (editors), New Developments in Zeolite Science and Technology (conference proceedings), Elsevier, ISBN 978-0-444-98981-9, page 80:
  • The graben constitutes a depositional basin and a topographic low, underlain by Cretaceous shales, in which volcanic debris accumulated in ephemeral lakes and streams in Oligocene and early Miocene time.

    Synonyms

    * (lasting for a short period of time) temporary, transitory, fleeting, evanescent, momentary, short-lived, short, volatile * See also

    Antonyms

    * (lasting for a long period of time) permanent, eternal, everlasting, timeless.

    Derived terms

    * ephemerally