Definition of "life"

life

/laɪf/

noun
usually uncountable, plural lives
1. (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.
  Quotations
  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: […]
  c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, Act II, scene vii
  1. (biology) 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.
2. 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.
  Quotations
  The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.
  1881, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., The Common Law
3. Lifeforms, generally or collectively.
4. (countable) A living individual; the fact of a particular individual being alive. (Chiefly when indicating individuals were lost (died) or saved.)
  Quotations
  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.
  2014 June 14, “It's a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891
5. Existence.
  Quotations
  " […] 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.
  1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp.; republished as chapter VI, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I, II, or III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927,
  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.
  2013 June 1, “Towards the end of poverty”, in The Economist‎, volume 407, number 8838, page 11
  Most things in life, including life itself, seemed to have articulated sections, discrete and separate and straightforward.
  1994, Robert Ferro, Violet Quill
  1. A worthwhile existence.
  2. A particular aspect of existence.
  3. (informal) Social life.
    Quotations
    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.
    1915, G[eorge] A. Birmingham [pseudonym; James Owen Hannay], chapter I, in Gossamer, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, page 01
  4. Something which is inherently part of a person's existence, such as job, family, a loved one, etc.
6. A period of time during which something has existence.
  1. The period during which one (a person, an animal, a plant; a civilization, species; a star; etc) is alive.
    Quotations
    “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.”
    1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company
    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.
    1936 Feb., F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up", Esquire
    "Life is pain," his mother said. "Anybody that says different is selling something."
    1973, William Goldman, The Princess Bride, page 60
  2. The span of time during which an object operates.
    Quotations
    Even if the bill's life is brief, the member who introduced it can still campaign as its champion.
    2016, Christine Barbour, Gerald C. Wright, Keeping the Republic
  3. The period of time during which an object is recognizable.
  4. A particular phase or period of existence.
    Quotations
    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.
    2011, Ehud Lamm, Ron Unger, Biological Computation, page 90
  5. 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).
    Quotations
    Typically, an appointed judge is appointed for life.
    2001, Cynthia L. Cates, Wayne V. McIntosh, Law and the Web of Society, page 73
    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[.]
    2013, Mahendra P. Singh, German Administrative Law, page 108
    (colloquial) A life sentence; a period of imprisonment that lasts until the convict's death (or, sometimes, parole).
7. Animation; spirit; vivacity.
  Quotations
  No notion of life and fire in fancy and in words.
  1711, Henry Felton, Dissertation on Reading the Classics
  That gives thy gestures grace and life.
  1807, William Wordsworth, To A Highland Girl
  1. The most lively component or participant.
    Quotations
    "Don't I know that it is you who is the life of this house. Two delightful children!"
    1970, Mathuram Bhoothalingam, The finger on the lute: the story of Mahakavi Subramania Bharati, National Council of Educational Research and Training, p.87
    And he is the life of the party at the Musgroves for precisely this reason: the navy has made him into a great storyteller.
    1998, Monica F. Cohen, Professional domesticity in the Victorian novel: Women, work and home, Cambridge University Press, page 32
8. A biography.
  Quotations
  Writers of particular lives […] are apt to be prejudiced in favour of their subject.
  1741, Conyers Middleton, Life of Cicero
9. Nature, reality, and the forms that exist in it.
  Quotations
  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.
  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.
  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.
  2010, Brad Steiger, Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside
10. An opportunity for existence.
  Quotations
  The photo book represented my promise to her—a new life—and she desperately clung to that promise.
  2012, Cindy Champnella, The 12 Gifts of Life
  1. (video games) One of the player's chances to play, lost when the player's character dies or when certain mistakes are made.
    Quotations
    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.
    1988, David Powell, Rygar (video game review) in Your Sinclair issue 25
  2. (baseball, softball, cricket) A chance for the batter (or batting team) to bat again, given as a result of an misplay by a member of the fielding team. –1930s or later]
    Quotations
    Borda sent a hot liner to G. Kugler, who made a nifty pick-up, but threw wild at first, giving the batter a life.
    1915 June 24, Philadelphians on the Diamond, in The New York Lumber Trade Journal, volume 59, oage 42
    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.
    1930 May, Boys' Life, page 49
  3. 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.
11. (uncountable, insurance) The life insurance industry.
12. (countable) A life assured under a life assurance policy (equivalent to the policy itself for a single life contract).
  Quotations
  He renewed two lives which had dropped.
  1862, Ellen Wood, The Channings
verb
third-person singular simple present lifes, present participle lifing, simple past and past participle lifed
1. (aviation) To replace components whose operational lifetime has expired.
  Quotations
  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; […]
  Ignacio Fernandez, ACCENT: Adaptive Control of Manufacturing Processes for a New Generation of Jet Engine Components, in 2012, D. Knörzer, J. Szodruch, Innovation for Sustainable Aviation in a Global Environment (page 302)
  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.
  2013, Chris Clark, From Hitler's U-Boats to Kruschev's Spyflights, page 180
interjection
1. (obsolete) Synonym of God's life (an oath)