life
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /laɪf/
enpr: līf
ipa: /læ̙ːf/
rhymes: -aɪf
Forms: form: lives
form: lyfe
Etymology: From Middle English lyf, from Old English līf, from Proto-West Germanic *līb, from Proto-Germanic *lībą (“life, body”), from *lībaną (“to remain, stay, be left”), from Proto-Indo-European *leyp- (“to stick, glue”).
Cognate with Scots life, leif (“life”), Saterland Frisian Lieuw (“body”), West Frisian liif (“body”), Cimbrian laip (“body”), Dutch lijf (“body”) and leven (“life”), German Leib (“body; womb”) and Leben (“life”), Low German Lief (“body; life”), Luxembourgish Leif, Läif (“body”), Vilamovian łaowa (“life”), Yiddish לײַב (layb, “body”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish liv (“life; waist”), Faroese lív (“life”), Icelandic líf (“life”). Related to belive.
The sense "biography" is likely a semantic loan from Medieval Latin vīta (“biography; hagiography”).
Senses: examples: text: I want my kids to live a good life.  He gave up on life.
text: My bloodleſſe bodie waxeth chill and colde,
And with my blood my life ſlides through my wound,
My ſoule begins to take her flight to hell,
And ſummones all my ſences to depart: […]
ref: c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act II, scene vii:
glosses: The state of organisms preceding their death, characterized by biological processes such as metabolism and reproduction and distinguishing them from inanimate objects; the state of being alive and living.
topics: biology
natural-sciences
glosses: The state of organisms preceding their death, characterized by biological processes such as metabolism and reproduction and distinguishing them from inanimate objects; the state of being alive and living.
The status possessed by any of a number of entities, including animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and sometimes viruses, which have the properties of replication and metabolism.
examples: text: The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.
ref: 1881, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., The Common Law:
glosses: The animating principle or force that keeps an inorganic thing or concept metaphorically alive (dynamic, relevant, etc) and makes it a "living document", "living constitution", etc.
examples: It's life, but not as we know it. She discovered plant life on the planet. The rover discovered signs of life on the alien world.
glosses: Lifeforms, generally or collectively.
examples: text: Many lives were lost during the war. Her quick thinking saved many dogs' lives.
text: One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains. Isolating a city’s effluent and shipping it away in underground sewers has probably saved more lives than any medical procedure except vaccination.
ref: 2014 June 14, “It's a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891:
glosses: A living being; the fact of a particular individual being alive. (Chiefly when indicating individuals were lost (died) or saved.)
examples: text: Man's life on this planet has been marked by continual conflict.
text: the eternal life of the soul
text: "[…]I realize as never before how cheap and valueless a thing is life. Life seems a joke, a cruel, grim joke. You are a laughable incident or a terrifying one as you happen to be less powerful or more powerful than some other form of life which crosses your path; but as a rule you are of no moment whatsoever to anything but yourself. You are a comic little figure, hopping from the cradle to the grave. Yes, that is our trouble—we take ourselves too seriously; but Caprona should be a sure cure for that." She paused and laughed.
ref: 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter VI, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:
text: But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.
ref: 2013 June 1, “Towards the end of poverty”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 11:
text: Most things in life, including life itself, seemed to have articulated sections, discrete and separate and straightforward.
ref: 1994, Robert Ferro, Violet Quill:
glosses: Existence.
examples: text: He gets up early in the morning, works all day long — even on weekends — and hardly sees his family. That's no life!  His life was ruined by drugs.
glosses: Existence.
A worthwhile existence.
examples: text: He struggled to balance his family life, social life and work life.
text: sex life
text: political life
glosses: Existence.
A particular aspect of existence.
examples: text: Get a life.
text: It is never possible to settle down to the ordinary routine of life at sea until the screw begins to revolve. There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy.
ref: 1915, G[eorge] A. Birmingham [pseudonym; James Owen Hannay], chapter I, in Gossamer, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, →OCLC, page 01:
glosses: Existence.
Social life.
examples: She's my love, my life. Running the bakery is her life.
glosses: Existence.
Something which is inherently part of a person's existence, such as job, family, a loved one, etc.
examples: text: “My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly.
Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan.
“Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”
ref: 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
text: Life was something you dominated if you were any good. Life yielded easily to intelligence and effort, or to what proportion could be mustered of both.
ref: 1936 Feb., F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up", Esquire
text: "Life is pain," his mother said. "Anybody that says different is selling something."
ref: 1973, William Goldman, The Princess Bride, page 60:
glosses: A period of time during which something has existence.
The period during which one (a person, an animal, a plant; a civilization, species; a star; etc) is alive.
examples: text: Even if the bill's life is brief, the member who introduced it can still campaign as its champion.
ref: 2016, Christine Barbour, Gerald C. Wright, Keeping the Republic, →ISBN:
text: This light bulb is designed to have a life of 2,000 hours.
glosses: A period of time during which something has existence.
The span of time during which an object operates.
examples: text: The life of this milk carton may be thousands of years in this landfill.
glosses: A period of time during which something has existence.
The period of time during which an object is recognizable.
examples: text: This would require that reproductive cells do not exist early on but rather are produced during the organism's adult life from the gemules sent from the various organs.
ref: 2011, Ehud Lamm, Ron Unger, Biological Computation, →ISBN, page 90:
glosses: A period of time during which something has existence.
A particular phase or period of existence.
examples: text: Typically, an appointed judge is appointed for life.
ref: 2001, Cynthia L. Cates, Wayne V. McIntosh, Law and the Web of Society, →ISBN, page 73:
text: As a general rule the judges of the administrative courts are appointed for life, i.e., they continue in their office till the completion of sixty-eight years in the Federal Administrative Court[.]
ref: 2013, Mahendra P. Singh, German Administrative Law, →ISBN, page 108:
glosses: A period of time during which something has existence.
A period extending from a when a (positive or negative) office, punishment, etc is conferred on someone until that person dies (or, sometimes, reaches retirement age).
glosses: A period of time during which something has existence.
A period extending from a when a (positive or negative) office, punishment, etc is conferred on someone until that person dies (or, sometimes, reaches retirement age).
A life sentence; a period of imprisonment that lasts until the convict's death (or, sometimes, parole).
examples: text: No notion of life and fire in fancy and in words.
ref: 1711, Henry Felton, Dissertation on Reading the Classics:
text: That gives thy gestures grace and life.
ref: 1807, William Wordsworth, To A Highland Girl:
glosses: Animation; spirit; vivacity.
examples: text: "Don't I know that it is you who is the life of this house. Two delightful children!"
ref: 1970, Mathuram Bhoothalingam, The finger on the lute: the story of Mahakavi Subramania Bharati, National Council of Educational Research and Training, p.87
text: And he is the life of the party at the Musgroves for precisely this reason: the navy has made him into a great storyteller.
ref: 1998, Monica F. Cohen, Professional domesticity in the Victorian novel: Women, work and home, Cambridge University Press, page 32:
glosses: Animation; spirit; vivacity.
The most lively component or participant.
examples: text: His life of the founder is finished, except for the title.
text: Writers of particular lives[…]are apt to be prejudiced in favour of their subject.
ref: 1741, Conyers Middleton, Life of Cicero:
glosses: A biography.
examples: text: The stories did not seem to me to touch life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. They left me with the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture, with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator.
ref: 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
text: The experts also agree that the bushmen only painted from life. This belief is borne out by the other Gorozamzi Hills cave paintings, which represent elephants, hippos, deer, and giraffe.
ref: 2010, Brad Steiger, Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside, →ISBN:
glosses: Nature, reality, and the forms that exist in it.
examples: text: The photo book represented my promise to her—a new life—and she desperately clung to that promise.
ref: 2012, Cindy Champnella, The 12 Gifts of Life, →ISBN:
glosses: An opportunity for existence.
examples: text: Scoring 1000 points is rewarded with an extra life.
text: Spend the time killing things and there's a bonus for each hit - but only for fatalities notched up since the start of your current life.
ref: 1988, David Powell, Rygar (video game review) in Your Sinclair issue 25
topics: video-games
glosses: An opportunity for existence.
One of the player's chances to play, lost when the player's character dies or when certain mistakes are made.
examples: text: Borda sent a hot liner to G. Kugler, who made a nifty pick-up, but threw wild at first, giving the batter a life.
ref: 1915 June 24, “Philadelphians on the Diamond”, in The New York Lumber Trade Journal, volume 59, page 42:
text: But shortstop Tenney, on what should have been the game's last out, gave a First Team batter a life on first, when he let a ground ball slip between his legs.
ref: 1930 May, Boys' Life, page 49:
topics: ball-games
baseball
cricket
games
hobbies
lifestyle
softball
sports
glosses: An opportunity for existence.
A chance for the batter (or batting team) to bat again, given as a result of a misplay by a member of the fielding team.
glosses: An opportunity for existence.
One of a player's chances to play in various children's playground games, lost when a mistake is made, for example being struck by the ball in dodgeball.
examples: text: I work in life.
topics: business
insurance
glosses: The life insurance industry.
examples: text: He renewed two lives which had dropped.
ref: 1862, Ellen Wood, The Channings:
glosses: A life assured under a life assurance policy (equivalent to the policy itself for a single life contract).
Synonyms: topics: philosophy
human-sciences
sciences
sense: essence of manifestation and foundation of being
word: existence
topics: philosophy
human-sciences
sciences
sense: essence of manifestation and foundation of being
word: experience
topics: time
word: the world in general
Coordinate terms: sense: insurance industry
word: general
sense: insurance industry
word: health
sense: insurance industry
word: pensions
Derived terms: 10-20-Life
about that life
afterlife
after-life
a-life
A-life
A-lifer
all one's life is worth
all one's life's worth
all that one's life is worth
antilife
anti-life
anti-lifer
artificial life
art imitates life
as big as life
as if one's life depended on it
as if one's life depends on it
as large as life
author of life
bag for life
bane of one's life
bane of someone's life
battery life
beg for one's life
benevolent dictator for life
bet one's life
bigger than life
bigger-than-life
biological life
birdlife
bread of life
breathe back to life
breathe new life into
breath of life
bring back to life
bring to life
cat and dog life
celebration of life
change of life
charmed life
circle of life
claim someone's life
come to life
consistent life ethic
counterlife
credit life insurance
cryolife
cyberlife
daily life
dark life
daylife
disability-adjusted life year
disability adjusted life year
dog's life
double life
Draw My Life
dreaming life
dream life
dreamlife
elixir of life
end of life
end-of-life
end one's life
enliven
estate for life
eternal life
even if one's life depended on it
everlasting life
everyday life
fact of life
fail at life
fight for one's life
fishlife
folklife
for dear life
forelife
for life
for one's life
for real life
for the life of one
frighten the life out of someone
get a life
get life
give life to
go for your life
good life
grab life by the balls
grab life by the horns
grab life by the throat
Greek life
half-life
halflife
have a nice life
have one's bread buttered for life
have one's whole life ahead of one
have the time of one's life
high life
highlife
high on life
homelife
home life
how's life
incompatible with life
in one's life
in real life
jaws of life
joint life
kiss of life
lack-life
larger than life
larger-than-life
lay down one's life
lead a cat-and-dog life
life admin
life-affirming
life after death
lifeaholic
life-and-death
life and limb
life and soul of the party
life annuity
life-arrow
lifebar
life-bearing
life belt
lifebelt
life bird
lifeblood
life boat
lifeboat
lifeboatman
life buoy
life-buoy
lifebuoy
life car
lifecare
life-care
lifecast
lifecasting
life-changing
life-changingly
life choice
life class
life coach
life coaching
life cot
life-critical
life-cycle
life cycle
lifecycle
lifeday
life-dinner principle
lifedraining
life drawing
life estate
life estate pur autre vie
life eternal
life event
life everlasting
life expectancy
life-expired
life extension
life-flight
life-force
life force
life form
life-form
lifefuel
lifeful
life-giver
life-giving
life goal
lifegoal
life goes on
lifeguard
lifehack
life hack
lifehacker
lifehacking
life hammer
life happens
life history
lifehold
life imitates art
life imprisonment
life insurance
life insurer
life interest
life is like a box of chocolates
life is not all beer and skittles
life is not all skittles and beer
life is short
life is too short
lifejacket
life jacket
life-lease
lifeless
life-lesson
life lesson
lifelet
lifelike
life line
lifeline
life-line
life list
lifelog
lifelogger
life-long
lifelong
life long
lifelore
life lore
life-lore
lifely
lifeman
lifemanship
life mask
lifemate
life member
life mortar
lifen
lifeness
life net
life off
life of its own
life of O'Reilly
life of Reilly
life of Riley
life of the party
life-or-death
life partner
lifepath
life peer
life plan
life preserver
life pro tip
lifer
life raft
liferent
liferenter
life review
life rights
life ring
life rocket
life's a bitch
life saver
lifesaver
life-saver
lifesaving
life-saving
life savings
lifescape
life school
life science
life sentence
life-sentenced
life sim
life simulation
life-size
life-sized
lifeskill
life skill
lifesome
life-source
lifespan
life span
lifespring
life stage
life stance
life story
lifestream
lifestreaming
lifestring
life style
lifestyle
life-style
life support
life-support
lifetable
life table
lifetaker
lifetap
life-telling
life tenant
life thread
life-threatening
lifetime
life-time
life vest
lifevest
lifeward
lifeway
lifewide
lifework
lifeworthy
lifey
life zone
lifie
like one's life depended on it
line of life
live one's best life
live one's own life
livish
long-life
long-lived
lose one's life
loss of life
love life
love of one's life
low life
low-life
lowlife
make it one's life
matter of life and death
matter of life or death
meaning of life
mercury of life
microlife
mid-life
midlife
mid-life crisis
mid-lifer
minelife
mirror life
more life in a tramp's vest
new lease of life
new lease on life
next life
nightlife
night-lifer
no-life
no-lifer
nonlife
non-life-threatening
not on your life
of someone's life
oh my life
on my life
on trial for one's life
pace-of-life syndrome
Parklife
parklife
past life
past-life
pay with one's life
personal life
plantlife
pond life
pondlife
pot life
prelife
primary life support system
prime of life
private life
pro-life
pro-lifer
proof of life
pseudo-life
pseudolife
public life
quality-adjusted life year
quality of life
quarter-life crisis
quarterlifer
real-life
real life
real-life experience
relife
right-to-life
right to life
right-to-lifer
risk life and limb
risk one's life
risk one's life and limb
run for one's life
save someone's life
scare the life out of
school life
sealife
self-life
sell one's life dearly
service life
set for life
sex life
shelf life
short-lived
sign of life
simple-lifeish
slice of life
social life
software life cycle
so is life
spring to life
staff of life
stake one's life
still-life
still life
storage life
story of my life
story of one's life
streetlife
such is life
swamplife
take one's life
take one's life in one's hands
take one's own life
take someone's life
tenancy for life
that's life
that's the way life is
the best things in life are free
the best things in life aren't things
the breath of life
there's life in the old dog yet
this is the life
thread of life
thug life
time of life
time of one's life
to save one's life
to the life
toys-to-life
tree of life
triangle of life
true-life
true to life
turn one's life around
turn one's life upside down
underlife
university of life
unlife
useful life
vanlife
variety is the spice of life
waking life
walk of life
warm as life
water of life
way of life
welcome to my life
wheel of life
whole-life
whole life order
whole life tariff
wildlife
wild life
within an inch of one's life
word of life
working life
work-life balance
work life
work-life
you only go around once in life
your money or your life
zero-life
Related terms: alive
live
lively