Word definition: life

Etimology


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”), North Frisian liff (“life, limb, person, livelihood”), West Frisian liif (“belly, abdomen”), Dutch lijf (“body”), Low German lif (“body; life, life-force; waist”), German Leib (“body; womb”) and Leben (“life”), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish liv (“life; waist”), Icelandic líf (“life”). Related to belive.

noun


life (usually uncountable, plural lives)

(uncountable) 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 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.

Lifeforms, generally or collectively.

(countable) A living individual; the fact of a particular individual being alive. (Chiefly when indicating individuals were lost (died) or saved.)

Existence.

A period of time during which something has existence.

Animation; spirit; vivacity.

A biography.

Nature, reality, and the forms that exist in it.

An opportunity for existence.

(uncountable, insurance) The life insurance industry.

(countable) A life assured under a life assurance policy (equivalent to the policy itself for a single life contract).

Examples


Having experienced both, the vampire decided that he preferred death to life.  He gave up on life.

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: […]

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.

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.

Many lives were lost during the war.   Her quick thinking saved many dogs' lives.

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.

Man's life on this planet has been marked by continual conflict.   the eternal life of the soul

" […] 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.

But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 : people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Most things in life, including life itself, seemed to have articulated sections, discrete and separate and straightforward.

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.

He struggled to balance his family life, social life and work life.   sex life, political life

Get a life.

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.

She's my love, my life.   Running the bakery is her life.

“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.”

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.

"Life is pain," his mother said. "Anybody that says different is selling something."

Even if the bill's life is brief, the member who introduced it can still campaign as its champion.

This light bulb is designed to have a life of 2,000 hours.

The life of this milk carton may be thousands of years in this landfill.

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.

Typically, an appointed judge is appointed for life.

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[.]

No notion of life and fire in fancy and in words.

That gives thy gestures grace and life.

"Don't I know that it is you who is the life of this house. Two delightful children!"

And he is the life of the party at the Musgroves for precisely this reason: the navy has made him into a great storyteller.

His life of the founder is finished, except for the title.

Writers of particular lives […] are apt to be prejudiced in favour of their subject.

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.

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.

The photo book represented my promise to her—a new life—and she desperately clung to that promise.

Scoring 1000 points is rewarded with an extra life.

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.

Borda sent a hot liner to G. Kugler, who made a nifty pick-up, but threw wild at first, giving the batter a life.

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.

I work in life.

He renewed two lives which had dropped.

Related words


synonyms

(philosophy, essence of manifestation and foundation of being): existence, experience

(the world in general): time

antonyms

(the state that precedes death): death

(biology): coma

(philosophy): void

coordinate terms

(insurance industry): general, health, pensions

related terms

alive

live

lively

verb


life (third-person singular simple present lifes, present participle lifing, simple past and past participle lifed)

(aviation) To replace components whose operational lifetime has expired.

Examples


Now, the aim of the design is to extract more cycles from the component under study, at each new engine generation requirements are driving a reduction in the margin for the error, as parts cannot stand any drop in properties. Thus, the lifing procedures are refined by means of new models or additional specific testing for limiting features to increase the life of the components; […]

A decision was made as a matter of internal policy that all 'lifed' components on the two Royal aircraft would be removed at half-life and fitted to the two support aircraft, where the remaining life would be used prior to overhaul at the normal time.

interjection


life

(obsolete) Synonym of God's life (an oath)

Data provided by Wiktionary