eli5: What’s the difference between lethal, fatal, and deadly?
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Rule of thumb: Deadly means there was precedence that it killed someone, lethal means that specifically this thing hasn’t, but in principle can kill, fatal means certain death.
You can look at the etymology to get a sense of the meaning: lethal is from Latin meaning “deadly” (so same as deadly, but since it’s a Latin loanword it’s used in a more technical/scientific context and because of science being principled and predictive it refers to being “deadly in principle”), fatal is a derivative (also a loan!) of “fated [to die]”, so certainly deadly and also a more technical term.
EDIT: Here’s an example ->Let’s say you have a high pressure gas tank that is above 250 bar pressure. If this tank catastrophically malfunctions or breaks open, the explosion from the overpressure is lethal (not fatal!). In principle being near such an explosion is pretty much not something you can survive, so in majority cases the wounds you gain would be fatal.
Lethality is in principle deadly, because no one can specifically say that in that specific case that specific person will certainly die, but there is a close to certainty about it (it would require a freak accident to survive).
Fatality is certainly deadly, because a doctor can look at the wounds or make a prognosis, that such wounds/symptoms are too severe to treat, so death is “fated”.
For technical/scientific context we need these distinctions to know whether someone can potentially be saved/helped or not. Someone with a fatal prognosis goes to hospice while someone brought to the ER from a lethal situation is quickly diagnosed and treated if possible, ALTHOUGH we are only this strict on paper, i.e in reports, manuals, warning signs or in journalism.
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