Life
nounThe condition that distinguishes living organisms from dead matter, or the state of being alive.
How to spell life
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce life
What does life mean?
- nounThe condition that distinguishes living organisms from dead matter, or the state of being alive.
- nounThe period during which a person lives, or the course of someone's existence.
Life in a sentence
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The surgeons worked through the night to save his life.
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She spent her whole life working as a teacher in the same town.
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Scientists searched the distant planet for any sign of life.
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Travelling across the country was the experience of a life for him.
Where does life come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Life descends directly from the Old English noun līf, which meant living existence, the body, and even a person's lifetime, and which had no connection at all to any classical language. It belongs to the native Germanic word stock, with close cousins such as Old Norse líf, Dutch lijf, and German Leib (now meaning 'body'), all tracing back to a Proto-Germanic root that carried the sense of remaining, continuing, or persisting. That old idea of 'continuing to be' is why a related family of English words, including 'live' and 'alive', shares the same ancestry. The spelling kept its long vowel through the centuries, and although the modern form looks deceptively simple, it sits at the heart of dozens of compounds such as 'lifetime', 'lifelike', and 'lifelong'. The plural form 'lives' preserves the older voiced consonant that the singular lost, a small reminder of the word's deep age.
How the word is built
- life (from Old English līf: life, body, existence); a single unbroken root with no prefix or suffix
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