mortal enemy
13
5.9
- noun
- /ˈmɔrtəl ˈɛnəmi/
:
enemigo mortal
- In the ancient tale, the knight vowed to vanquish his mortal enemy, a fearsome dragon.
- become a mortal enemy
- once a mortal enemy
- now a mortal enemy
And then you get your tattoos that shows you what gang you belong to, and the others become your mortal enemies.
- And then you get your tattoos that shows you what gang you belong to, and the others become your mortal enemies.
- Because it was really house to house fighting everywhere where people who used to be neighbors now became mortal enemies.
- Let's sell weapons to our mortal enemy Iran from already the other hostage situation.
Examples
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Behold our mortal enemy.
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When you work with someone that you've known for 18 years, you can either be best friends or mortal enemies.
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God, please destroy the power of your mortal enemy!
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You go to my mortal enemy for help?
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If the hunt chief is alive, he becomes our mortal enemy.
Fiction book (1993) -
Right and wrong turn inside out as she finds herself falling in love with her mortal enemy.
Blog text (18) -
Two presidents... two brothers, mortal enemies.
Fiction book (1993) -
You're face-to-face with your mortal enemy!
Fiction book (1995) -
From time immemorial, vampires and witches have been mortal enemies, generation after generation, one millennium to the next.
-
Back in the old days, Crow and Cheyenne were mortal enemies, like Crow and Sioux.
Fiction book (1991)
Synonyms
45
8.1
A powerful enemy or thing that causes someone's defeat
5
7.8
A person's main enemy who often opposes them
Antonyms
How Hostile
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'mortal' (causing or involving death) modifies 'enemy' (a hostile person), so the phrase denotes an enemy capable of killing or utterly destroying you. This predictable combination follows normal adjective+noun semantics and occurs cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should be able to infer the meaning.
Etymology
The phrase mortal enemy uses mortal to mean 'deadly' or 'able to cause death', so it creates the image of a person who wants to kill or completely destroy you. That's why it now means 'an enemy who wishes to cause your death or completely destroy you'.