Immortality

One of the fruits of the road trip was a discussion of immortality, amusingly punctuated by near-death experiences with semis and red lights that whooshed past like airplanes.

The question of the day: isn’t it definitionally impossible for an immortal being to be killed? All those supposedly immortal vampires, for instance, who are constantly being popped off by others of their kind: shouldn’t they be called semi-mortals instead of immortals, given that they can and do kick the bucket?

Emma responded that semi-mortality sounded ridiculous and no self-respecting god or vampire would ever use it; I replied that this was because vampires and the kinds of gods who die are famous for lying whenever it suits them and/or would make them look more stylish, and the world would benefit from a semi-mortality truth in advertising campaign. What self-respecting teenage girl would think pledging her life to a semi-mortal being was the height of romantic ecstasy?

The spread of semi-mortality would break the back of the whole Twilight mania. For this reason alone it’s worth it.

All salutary social effects aside, I think I won the argument factually too. The dictionary is totally on my side: “immortal” means “exempt from death,” with no silly qualifiers like “unless killed by someone else.”

However, the definition did make me wonder about Captain Jack Harkness, who never stays dead but is definitely not exempt from dying. He might technically meet the qualifications for “immortal,” but he should have his own word. Words should fit properly, like shoes. “Vivamort” or “oscillimortal”—a person who swings between death and life.

Because the world is serendipitous, “oscili-“ is right next to “osculum” (kiss) in my Latin list, and “osculimortal” not be a bad description of Jack, either.

…it’s just too damn bad that there aren’t careers in experimental philology.