fatality

From French fatalité. equivalent to fatal +‎ -ity.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /feɪˈtælɪti/, [feɪ̯ˈtʰælɪɾi], /fə-/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /fəˈtælətɪ/, /fəˈtælɪtɪ/, /feɪ-/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -ælɪti

fatality (plural fatalities)

1. The state proceeding from destiny; invincible necessity, superior to, and independent of, free and rational control. [from 17th c.]
2. Tendency to death, destruction or danger, as if by decree of fate. [from 17th c.]
3. That which is decreed by fate or which is fatal; a fatal event. [from 18th c.]
   • 1851, Wilkie Collins, The Twin Sisters:

     What can I say, or think of this most terrible of fatalities?

4. Death.
5. An accident that causes death. [from 19th c.]
   • 2011, David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, page 13:

     the whole thing felt like being in a near traffic fatality avoided by inches and later not being able to think of the whole thing lest you begin shaking...

6. A person killed.
7. (video games) A move used to deliver a coup de grâce to a defeated opponent.
   • 2023 November 13, James Somers, “A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft”, in The New Yorker‎^[1], →ISSN:

     My first enchantment with computers came when I was about six years old, in Montreal in the early nineties, playing Mortal Kombat with my oldest brother. He told me about some “fatalities”—gruesome, witty ways of killing your opponent.

• (state proceeding from destiny): inevitability
• (tendency to death, destruction or danger): mortality

• lethality

• fatality rate