— fatalness , n.
/fayt"l/ , adj.
1. causing or capable of causing death; mortal; deadly: a fatal accident; a fatal dose of poison.
2. causing destruction, misfortune, ruin, or failure: The withdrawal of funds was fatal to the project.
3. decisively important; fateful: The fatal day finally arrived.
4. proceeding from or decreed by fate; inevitable: a fatal series of events.
5. influencing or concerned with fate; fatalistic.
6. Obs. doomed.
7. Obs. prophetic.
[ 1350-1400; ME ( fatalis of fate. See FATE, -AL 1 ]
Syn. 1. FATAL, DEADLY, LETHAL, MORTAL apply to something that has caused or is capable of causing death. FATAL may refer to either the future or the past; in either case, it emphasizes inevitability and the inescapable - the disastrous, whether death or dire misfortune: The accident was fatal. Such a mistake would be fatal.
DEADLY looks to the future, and suggests that which is likely to cause death (though not inevitably so): a deadly poison, disease. Like DEADLY, LETHAL looks to the future but, like many other words of Latin origin, suggests a more technical usage: a lethal dose; a gas that is lethal. MORTAL looks to the past and refers to death that has actually occurred: He received a mortal wound. The disease proved to be mortal. 2. ruinous, disastrous, calamitous, catastrophic, devastating. 4. predestined, foreordained.
Ant. 1. life-giving.