Link Centre Dictionary

life

UK/ˈlaɪ̯f/ US/ˈlaɪ̯f/ very common informal

noun

1.

a characteristic state or mode of living

  • “social life”
  • “city life”
  • “real life”
2.

the course of existence of an individual; the actions and events that occur in living

  • “he hoped for a new life in Australia”
  • “he wanted to live his own life without interference from others”
3.

the experience of living; the course of human events and activities

  • “he could no longer cope with the complexities of life”
Synonyms
4.

the condition of living or the state of being alive

  • “while there”
  • “s hope”
  • “life depends on many chemical and physical processes”
Synonyms
5.

the period during which something is functional (as between birth and death)

  • “the battery had a short life”
  • “he lived a long and happy life”
Synonyms
6.

the period between birth and the present time

  • “I have known him all his life”
7.

animation and energy in action or expression

  • “it was a heavy play and the actors tried in vain to give life to it”
Synonyms
8.

an account of the series of events making up a person''s life

Synonyms
9.

the period from the present until death

  • “he appointed himself emperor for life”
10.

a living person

  • “his heroism saved a life”
11.

living things collectively

  • “the oceans are teeming with life”
12.

a motive for living

  • “pottery was his life”
13.

the organic phenomenon that distinguishes living organisms from nonliving ones

  • “there is no life on the moon”
14.

a prison term lasting as long as the prisoner lives

  • “he got life for killing the guard”
Synonyms

Origin

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”).

Phrases

  • about that life
  • all one's life is worth
  • all one's life's worth
  • all that one's life is worth
  • art imitates life
  • artificial life
  • as big as life
  • as if one's life depended on it

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

Narrower terms

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WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.