What does 'mortified' mean?

[fluffles]

I always thought it meant humiliated or ashamed but i keep hearing it used in other ways:

For example this para from bbc news:

"When the coroner told me it was not Charles, I was just mortified. I knew I had lost him. The three years of hell that we had endured was not over and it's now gone on nearly 20 years and it's still not over."

What does she mean? was she angry? or upset?

Has anybody else heard people use 'mortified' to mean something other than its actual dictionary definition?

p.s. I am not claiming to be a spelling or grammar pedant so pleases don't pick holes in my post - i can't spell

I think people have started to use it for "felt terrible", but I think it's reall embarassed / humiliated etc

I've always understood it to mean embarrassed or humiliated. I presume the derivation is from the French 'mortir' (to die) as in mortuary so maybe the original meaning was something along the lines of wishing you were/ being dead from embarrassment or humiliation.

DH uses 'mortified' when he means "really upset" and has done for years, at least 15 anyway...and it bugs me. I use it as a way of saying "really ashamed/embarrassed".

Is it rooted in something to do with death - mort being dead/death in latinate languages (I think)...so embarrassed you wish you were dead??!!

cestlavie...you said it as I typed it

ah, great minds tigana (are possibly equally wrong! )

tigana - YES, you have put your finger on something i've been hearing around me but not really putting MY finger on - people ARE using it to mean 'really upset'.

Weirdos

Agree that it means in effect "die of embarrasment" ... have also heard some weird uses of it, particularly by journalist types

what have i just written? embarrassment i meant! (here of all places to type errors)

I am mortified by this thread!

Mortified is fast becoming one of my personal bugbears as I keep hearing it being used wrongly to mean upset/angry. It's right up there with disinterested and Russell Brand describing the Holocaust as a travesty.

My Collins English dictionary says:

mortify: 1 to humiliate or cause to feel shame.

There are other senses but they don't have an 'upset' meaning. However, it does originally come from the Latin word for death so I assume that she meant something like she felt as if she had died when she heard the news. Or something. Anyway, you're right.

I read the same story as you and it jumped out at me too.

as in "the body was mortified".

lol Rhubs