[syn: life sentence, life]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Life \Life\ (l[imac]f), n.; pl. Lives (l[imac]vz). [AS.
l[imac]f; akin to D. lijf body, G. leib body, MHG. l[imac]p
life, body, OHG. l[imac]b life, Icel. l[imac]f, life, body,
Sw. lif, Dan. liv, and E. live, v. [root]119. See Live, and
cf. Alive.]
1. The state of being which begins with generation, birth, or
germination, and ends with death; also, the time during
which this state continues; that state of an animal or
plant in which all or any of its organs are capable of
performing all or any of their functions; -- used of all
animal and vegetable organisms.
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2. Of human beings: The union of the soul and body; also, the
duration of their union; sometimes, the deathless quality
or existence of the soul; as, man is a creature having an
immortal life.
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She shows a body rather than a life. --Shak.
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3. (Philos.) The potential principle, or force, by which the
organs of animals and plants are started and continued in
the performance of their several and cooperative
functions; the vital force, whether regarded as physical
or spiritual.
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4. Figuratively: The potential or animating principle, also,
the period of duration, of anything that is conceived of
as resembling a natural organism in structure or
functions; as, the life of a state, a machine, or a book;
authority is the life of government.
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5. A certain way or manner of living with respect to
conditions, circumstances, character, conduct, occupation,
etc.; hence, human affairs; also, lives, considered
collectively, as a distinct class or type; as, low life; a
good or evil life; the life of Indians, or of miners.
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That which before us lies in daily life. --Milton.
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By experience of life abroad in the world. --Ascham.
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Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime. --Longfellow.
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'T is from high life high characters are drawn.
--Pope
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6. Animation; spirit; vivacity; vigor; energy.
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No notion of life and fire in fancy and in words.
--Felton.
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That gives thy gestures grace and life.
--Wordsworth.
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7. That which imparts or excites spirit or vigor; that upon
which enjoyment or success depends; as, he was the life of
the company, or of the enterprise.
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8. The living or actual form, person, thing, or state; as, a
picture or a description from, the life.
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9. A person; a living being, usually a human being; as, many
lives were sacrificed.
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10. The system of animal nature; animals in general, or
considered collectively.
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Full nature swarms with life. --Thomson.
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11. An essential constituent of life, esp: the blood.
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The words that I speak unto you . . . they are
life. --John vi. 63.
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The warm life came issuing through the wound.
--Pope
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12. A history of the acts and events of a life; a biography;
as, Johnson wrote the life of Milton.
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13. Enjoyment in the right use of the powers; especially, a
spiritual existence; happiness in the favor of God;
heavenly felicity.
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14. Something dear to one as one's existence; a darling; --
used as a term of endearment.
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Note: Life forms the first part of many compounds, for the
most part of obvious meaning; as, life-giving,
life-sustaining, etc.
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Life annuity, an annuity payable during one's life.
Life arrow, Life rocket, Life shot, an arrow, rocket,
or shot, for carrying an attached line to a vessel in
distress in order to save life.
Life assurance. See Life insurance, below.
Life buoy. See Buoy.
Life car, a water-tight boat or box, traveling on a line
from a wrecked vessel to the shore. In it person are
hauled through the waves and surf.
Life drop, a drop of vital blood. --Byron.
Life estate (Law), an estate which is held during the term
of some certain person's life, but does not pass by
inheritance.
Life everlasting (Bot.), a plant with white or yellow
persistent scales about the heads of the flowers, as
Antennaria, and Gnaphalium; cudweed.
Life of an execution (Law), the period when an execution is
in force, or before it expires.
Life guard. (Mil.) See under Guard.
Life insurance, the act or system of insuring against
death; a contract by which the insurer undertakes, in
consideration of the payment of a premium (usually at
stated periods), to pay a stipulated sum in the event of
the death of the insured or of a third person in whose
life the insured has an interest.
Life interest, an estate or interest which lasts during
one's life, or the life of another person, but does not
pass by inheritance.
Life land (Law), land held by lease for the term of a life
or lives.
Life line.
(a) (Naut.) A line along any part of a vessel for the
security of sailors.
(b) A line attached to a life boat, or to any life saving
apparatus, to be grasped by a person in the water.
Life rate, rate of premium for insuring a life.
Life rent, the rent of a life estate; rent or property to
which one is entitled during one's life.
Life school, a school for artists in which they model,
paint, or draw from living models.
Lifetable, a table showing the probability of life at
different ages.
To lose one's life, to die.
To seek the life of, to seek to kill.
To the life, so as closely to resemble the living person or
the subject; as, the portrait was drawn to the life.
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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
life
n 1: a characteristic state or mode of living; "social life";
"city life"; "real life"
2: the experience of being alive; the course of human events and
activities; "he could no longer cope with the complexities of
life" [syn: life, living]
3: 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"
4: the condition of living or the state of being alive; "while
there's life there's hope"; "life depends on many chemical
and physical processes" [syn: animation, life, living,
aliveness]
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" [syn: life, lifetime, life-time,
lifespan]
6: the period between birth and the present time; "I have known
him all his life"
7: the period from the present until death; "he appointed
himself emperor for life"
8: a living person; "his heroism saved a life"
9: animation and energy in action or expression; "it was a heavy
play and the actors tried in vain to give life to it" [syn:
liveliness, life, spirit, sprightliness]
10: living things collectively; "the oceans are teeming with
life"
11: the organic phenomenon that distinguishes living organisms
from nonliving ones; "there is no life on the moon"
12: an account of the series of events making up a person's life
[syn: biography, life, life story, life history]
13: a motive for living; "pottery was his life"
14: a prison term lasting as long as the prisoner lives; "he got
life for killing the guard" [syn: life sentence, life]
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
235 Moby Thesaurus words for "life":
Adamite, Clio, Muse of history, activator, activity, adventures,
affairs, age, alacrity, an existence, animal spirits, animation,
animator, annals, anxiety, anxiousness, appetite, ardor, arouser,
autobiography, avidity, avidness, being, biographical sketch,
biography, body, bounce, breathless impatience, breeziness, brio,
briskness, bubbliness, capersomeness, case history, cat, chap,
character, cheerful readiness, chronicle, chronicles, chronology,
circumstances, coltishness, compulsion, concerns,
condition of things, conditions, confessions, creature, critter,
curriculum vitae, customer, dash, dazzle, dealings, diary, doings,
duck, duration, eagerness, earthling, ebullience, effervescence,
elan, elan vital, elasticity, energizer, energy, ens, entelechy,
enthusiasm, entity, esprit, esse, essence, existence, experiences,
exuberance, fellow, fixation, flair, flavor, fortunes, forwardness,
freshness, friskiness, frolicsomeness, gaiety, gamesomeness,
gayness, generation, get-up-and-go, glow, goings-on, groundling,
gust, gusto, guy, hagiography, hagiology, hand, head, heartiness,
historiography, history, homo, human, human being, human dynamo,
impatience, impetuosity, impetus, individual, joie de vivre, joker,
journal, keen desire, keenness, legend, life and letters,
life story, lifeblood, lifetime, liveliness, living, living soul,
lustiness, man, march of events, martyrology, materiality, matters,
memoir, memoirs, memorabilia, memorial, memorials, mettle, monad,
mortal, motivating force, motive power, moving spirit, moxie,
necrology, nose, obituary, object, obsession, occurrence, one,
oomph, organism, party, passion, pep, peppiness,
period of existence, perkiness, person, persona, personage,
personality, pertness, photobiography, piss and vinegar, pizzazz,
playfulness, preoccupation, presence, proceedings, profile,
promptness, pungency, quickness, readiness, record, relations,
resilience, restorative, resume, robustness, rollicksomeness,
rompishness, run of things, sentience, single, skittishness,
somebody, someone, something, soul, spark of life, spark plug,
sparkle, spirit, spiritedness, spirits, sportiveness,
sprightliness, spring, state of affairs, stimulant, stimulator,
stimulus, story, subsistence, substantiality, survival, sustenance,
tellurian, terran, the times, the world, theory of history, thing,
time, tonic, unit, verve, viability, vigor, vim, vital spark,
vitality, vivaciousness, vivacity, warmth, way of life,
what happens, worldling, zest, zestfulness, zing, zip
V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (February 2016):
LIFE
Laboratory for International Fuzzy Engineering [research] (MITI)
V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (February 2016):
LIFE
Logistics Interface For manufacturing Environment
The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):
life
n.
1. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway and first
introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (Scientific American, October 1970);
the game's popularity had to wait a few years for computers on which it
could reasonably be played, as it's no fun to simulate the cells by hand.
Many hackers pass through a stage of fascination with it, and hackers at
various places contributed heavily to the mathematical analysis of this
game (most notably Bill Gosper at MIT, who even implemented life in TECO
!). When a hacker mentions ?life?, he is much more likely to mean this
game than the magazine, the breakfast cereal, or the human state of
existence. Many web resources are available starting from the Open
Directory page of Life. The Life Lexicon is a good indicator of what makes
the game so fascinating.
[glider]
A glider, possibly the best known of the quasi-organic phenomena in the
Game of Life.
2. The opposite of Usenet. As in ?Get a life!?
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
life
1. Conway's Game of Life.
2. The opposite of Usenet/the Internet/video
games/whatever the speaker considers a waste of time. As in
"Get a life!"
3. Logic of Inheritance, Functions and Equations (LIFE)
An object-oriented, functional, constraint-based language by
Hassan Ait-Kacy et al of MCC, Austin TX, 1987.
LIFE integrates ideas from LOGIN and LeFun.
See also Wild_LIFE.
["Is There a Meaning to LIFE?", H. Ait-Kacy et al, Intl Conf
on Logic Prog, 1991].
(2015-05-04)
Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary:
Life
generally of physical life (Gen. 2:7; Luke 16:25, etc.); also
used figuratively (1) for immortality (Heb. 7:16); (2) conduct
or manner of life (Rom. 6:4); (3) spiritual life or salvation
(John 3:16, 17, 18, 36); (4) eternal life (Matt. 19:16, 17; John
3:15); of God and Christ as the absolute source and cause of all
life (John 1:4; 5:26, 39; 11:25; 12:50).
Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):
LIFE. The aggregate of the animal functions which resist death. Bichat.
2. The state of animated beings, while they possess the power of
feeling and motion. It commences in contemplation of law generally as soon
as the infant is able to stir in the mother's womb; 1 Bl. Com. 129; 3 Inst.
50; Wood's Inst. 11; and ceases at death. Lawyers and legislators are not,
however, the best physiologists, and it may be justly suspected that in fact
life commences before the mother can perceive any motion of the foetus. 1
Beck's Med. Jur. 291.
3. For many purposes, however, life is considered as begun from the
moment of conception in ventre sa mere. Vide Foetus. But in order to acquire
and transfer civil rights the child must be born alive. Whether a child is
born alive, is to be ascertained from certain signs which are always
attendant upon life. The fact of the child's crying is the most certain.
There may be a certain motion in a new born infant which may last even for
hours, and yet there may not be complete life. It seems that in order to
commence life the child must be born with the ability to breathe, and must
actually have breathed. 1 Briand, Med. Leg. 1ere partie, c. 6, art. 1.
4. Life is presumed to continue at least till one hundred years. 9
Mart. Lo. R. 257 See Death; Survivorship.
5. Life is considered by the law of the utmost importance, and its most
anxious care is to protect it. 1 Bouv. Inst. n. 202-3.
The Devil's Dictionary (1881-1906):
LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live
in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed.
The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed;
particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written
at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of
the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of
successful controversy.
"Life's not worth living, and that's the truth,"
Carelessly caroled the golden youth.
In manhood still he maintained that view
And held it more strongly the older he grew.
When kicked by a jackass at eighty-three,
"Go fetch me a surgeon at once!" cried he.
Han Soper