memento mori

From Latin mementō morī (literally “be mindful of dying”).

• IPA^(key): /məˈmɛntoʊ ˈmɔːɹi/

memento mori

1. An emblematic object or personal ornament, such as a skull, used as a reminder of one's mortality.
   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 62, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

     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.”

   • 1995, Klein, Richard, “Introduction”, in Cigarettes are sublime, Paperback edition, Durham: Duke University Press, published 1993, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 8:

     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.

   • 2014 April 1, Tom Service, “Sex, death and dissonance: the strange, obsessive world of Anton Bruckner”, in The Guardian‎:

     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.

   • 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: A Natural History, page 65:

     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.

• vanitas

• memento mori on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Borrowed from Latin mementō morī.

memento mori n

1. memento mori (reminder of mortality)

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /meˈmen.toː ˈmo.riː/, [mɛˈmɛn̪t̪oː ˈmɔriː]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /meˈmen.to ˈmo.ri/, [meˈmɛn̪t̪o ˈmɔːri]

mementō morī

1. (literally) Be mindful of dying.
2. (idiomatic) Do not forget that you are only human.