memento mori
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: /məˌmɛntoʊ ˈmɔːɹi/
Forms: form: memento mori
form: memento moris
form: mementos mori
form: mementoes mori
Etymology: From Latin mementō morī (literally “be mindful of dying”).
Senses: examples: text: No, Ile be ſworne: I make as good vſe of it, as many a man doth of a Deaths-Head, or a Memento Mori.
ref: c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii], page 64:
text: A great man must keep his heir at his feast like a living memento mori. If he holds very much by life, the presence of the other must be a constant sting and warning. “Make ready to go,” says the successor to your honour; “I am waiting: and I could hold it as well as you.”
ref: 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter XXIII, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume II, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC, page 229:
text: I have often heard you express your dislike of any impertinent memento moris—you have even thought it irreligious, and unthankful for present good; and tending to chill the life-blood, the little that is left in the old, and to throw a wet blanket over the cheerfulness of the young, out of which cheerfulness elastic manhood is to spring, and to take upon itself to do the manly responsible duties of life vigorously. I repeat that you have always maintained, that to thrust a memento mori in every man’s face, or to carve it upon his walking-stick, is irreligious, because it is essential unthankfulness.
ref: 1854 October, “Civilisation.—The Census.”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume LXXVI, number CCCCLXVIII, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood & Sons, […], page 447, column 2:
text: On All Saints’ day, Toussaint, the festival of the dead, the fête des morts, the whole town, and especially the cemetery of Rheims, was a scene of lively, and I may say cheerful, excitement. Along the street leading to the latter were arranged on both sides stalls and tables, gayly festooned with crowns, crosses, and memento moris, and attended by female hucksters.
ref: 1867, Robert Tomes, “A Cheerful Resort—Cemetery at Rheims—Death and Champagne—[…]”, in The Champagne Country, New YorK, N.Y.: […] [Melancthon M.] Hurd and [Henry Oscar] Houghton, […], pages 193–194:
text: Here Rudolf tried to insulate himself from the world in a huge accumulation of curiosities and works of art, by all accounts just such a hodge-podge as that of effigies of giants, portraits of horned dwarfs, chastity belts, and mementoes mori in coral as one may see today in the rooms of the Hapsburg Schloss Ambras outside Innsbruck.
ref: 1962, Brian Knox, “Prague: Castle and City”, in Bohemia and Moravia: An Architectural Companion, London: Faber and Faber Limited […], page 27:
text: Three days after her proclamation Victoria drove down to Windsor. She had already given an audience to the Earl Marshal and Garter King at Arms about her uncle’s funeral. It remained to visit the Castle, where his remains lay in state, and give her condolences to the Queen Dowager. / Despite her morbid interest in mementoes mori she did not enjoy this visit. The royal standard hung limply at half mast.
ref: 1971, Tyler Whittle, chapter 4, in The Young Victoria, London: Pan Books Ltd, published 1973, →ISBN, page 192:
text: The series of moments [which] the clock records is not only a succession of “nows” but a memento mori diminishing the number of seconds that remain before death.
ref: 1993, Richard Klein, “Introduction”, in Cigarettes are sublime, Paperback edition, Durham: Duke University Press, published 1995, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 8:
text: At least it’s given me a chance to study the hospital’s collection of discreet mementoes mori. It’s not just the leaflets from the local council posted around the place telling you, so tastefully, how to register a death, or the instructions on how to get hold of an emergency priest or a rabbi when the moment comes. It’s everywhere.
ref: 1998, John Diamond, C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too…, London: Vermilion, Ebury Press, published 1999, →ISBN, page 29:
text: And there were even stranger sides to this kind of behaviour: when his mother died, Bruckner commissioned a photograph of her on her death bed and kept it in his teaching room. He had no image of his mother when she was alive, just this grotesque-seeming token of her death staring out at him as an unsettling memento mori.
ref: 2014 April 1, Tom Service, “Sex, death and dissonance: the strange, obsessive world of Anton Bruckner”, in The Guardian:
text: As a student of the fossil record, I can assure you that it’s not often that creatures are transformed, in flagrante delicto, into memento mori.
ref: 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: A Natural History, page 65:
text: Bright enamel is a feature of posies around the late sixteenth to mid-seventeenth century, with darker enamels continuing into the eighteenth century on memento moris like this example.
ref: 2021, Jo Ahmet, 50 Finds From Kent: Objects from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Amberley Publishing, →ISBN:
glosses: An emblematic object or personal ornament, such as a skull, used as a reminder of one's mortality.
Related terms: vanitas