Life-time or lifetime?
life-time is a noun meaning “Alternative spelling of lifetime”; lifetime is a noun meaning “The duration of the life of someone or something”. Wiktionary gives them as spellings of the same word. life-time is written with a hyphen and lifetime as one word; they are used differently.
What is the difference between life-time and lifetime?
| life-time | lifetime | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun |
| Meaning | Alternative spelling of lifetime | The duration of the life of someone or something informalA long period of time |
| Example | none recorded | a project that will take many human lifetimes to complete |
| Forms | life-times | lifetimes |
| Pronunciation | not recorded | /ˈlaɪf.taɪm/ |
| In writing | not counted (the list counts single words) | 25 times per million words |
Sources: life-time and lifetime 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-time and lifetime
life-time
- 1
Alternative spelling of lifetime
lifetime
- 1
The duration of the life of someone or something
a project that will take many human lifetimes to complete
- 2
informalA long period of time
I've been waiting a lifetime for a train
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-time or lifetime?
life-time is a phrase, which the list of single words does not count; lifetime 25 times per 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-time vs lifetime?
“life-time vs lifetime” is searched about 30 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“lifetime vs life-time”, “life-time or lifetime”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.