Life cycle or lifecycle?
life cycle is a noun meaning “The course of stages through which an organism passes from fertilized zygote…”; lifecycle is a noun meaning “Alternative spelling of life cycle”. Wiktionary gives them as spellings of the same word. life cycle is written as two words and lifecycle as one word; they are used differently.
What is the difference between life cycle and lifecycle?
| life cycle | lifecycle | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun |
| Meaning | The course of stages through which an organism passes from fertilized zygote until maturity, reproduction, and death The useful life of a product or system; the developmental history of an individual or group in society | Alternative spelling of life cycle |
| Example | Meronym: life forms | none recorded |
| Forms | life-cycles | lifecycles |
| Pronunciation | /ˈlaɪf ˌsaɪ.kəl/ | not recorded |
| In writing | not counted (the list counts single words) | about once in every 1 million words |
Sources: life cycle and lifecycle in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of life cycle and lifecycle
life cycle
- 1
The course of stages through which an organism passes from fertilized zygote until maturity, reproduction, and death
Meronym: life forms
- 2
Alternative form of life cycle
- 3
The useful life of a product or system; the developmental history of an individual or group in society
lifecycle
- 1
Alternative spelling of life cycle
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, life cycle or lifecycle?
life cycle is a phrase, which the list of single words does not count; lifecycle about once in every 1 million words.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search life cycle vs lifecycle?
“life cycle vs lifecycle” is searched about 10 times a month on Bing (Google reports it together with close variants, so it has no figure of its own) in the United States.
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.