life
Meanings
- 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.
- 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.
- A living being; the fact of a particular individual being alive. (Chiefly when indicating individuals were lost (died) or saved.)
- Existence.
- A worthwhile existence.
- A particular aspect of existence.
- Social life.
- Something which is inherently part of a person's existence, such as job, family, a loved one, etc.
- 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.
- To replace components whose operational lifetime has expired.
- Synonym of God's life (an oath).
- God.
- Conway's Game of Life.
- A surname.
Pronunciation
Word forms
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”).