Etymology From Middle English mort, from Old French mort (“death”).
1
Death; especially, the death of game in hunting.
If you did the wrong thing at the mort or the undoing, for instance, you were bent over the body of the dead beast and smacked with the flat side of a sword.1958, Terence Hanbury White, chapter I, in The Once and Future King, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, →ISBN, book I (The Sword in the Stone):
2
A note sounded on a horn at the death of a deer.
The sportsman then sounded a treble mort.1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC:
3
Scotland, UK, Dialectal The skin of a sheep or lamb that has died of disease.
4
Card games, Games A variety of dummy whist for three players.
5
Card games, Games The exposed or dummy hand of cards in the game of mort.
Etymology Compare Icelandic margt, neuter of margr (“many”).
1
A great quantity or number.
a mort of water1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 63, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC:
Full o’ sut this chimney is. Ain’t been swep’ for a mort o’ years I reckon.1937, Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon:
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1937 (written, first published in 1949), J. R. R. Tolkien, Farmer Giles of Ham As it was, he still had a mort of treasure at home in his cave.
mort
noun
Etymology Clipping of mortal.
1
Internet, Informal A player in a multi-user dungeon who does not have special administrator privileges and whose character can be killed.
Etymology UK circa 1560–1890. Unknown. Documented possibilities include: * From mort (“A three-year-old salmon”), by equation of women with fish. * From Welsh modryb (“aunt”) * From Welsh morwyn (“maid, virgin”) * From French amourette (“a crush”) * From, or cognate with, Dutch mot (“pig, lewd woman”), from Middle Low German mutte. * From French motte (“mound, esp. mons veneris”) * From Romani mintš (“female genitals”). Cognate with English minge.
Male gypsies all, not a mort among them.1621, Ben Jonson, The Gypsies Metamorphosed:
"Yes, master! I and my mort worships something besides good ale; don't we, Sue?" and then he leered at the mort, who leered at him, and both made odd motions backwards and forwards, causing the baskets which hung round them to creak and rustle, and uttering loud shouts of laughter, which roused the echoes of the neighbouring hills.1862, George Borrow, Wild Wales:
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KINCHIN-MORTS, the Twenty-seventh and last Order of the Canting Crew, being girls of a year or two old whom the Morts (their Mothers) carry at their Backs in Slates (Sheets) and if they have no children of their own they[…]1896, John Stephen Farmer, Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present: A Dictionary ... with Synonyms in English, French ... Etc. Compiled by J.S. Farmer [and W.E. Henley], page 109: