life
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "life", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "life" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "life" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
life is aEnglishnoun. It means: 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 ... Pronounced /laɪf/. It ranks #134 in English word frequency. Often confused with lit and lip.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | life |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /laɪf/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #134 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for life is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /laɪf/. Corpus data places it at rank #134 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 26 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for life, with forms such as "ilfe", "lfie", and "lief". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "lit", "lip", "lil", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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”), Sa… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is life, spelled L-I-F-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The 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.
- 2The 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.
- 3The 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.
- 4Lifeforms, generally or collectively.
- 5A living being; the fact of a particular individual being alive. (Chiefly when indicating individuals were lost (died) or saved.)
- 6Existence.
- 7Existence.
- 8Existence.
- 9Existence.
- 10Existence.
- 11A period of time during which something has existence.
- 12A period of time during which something has existence.
- 13A period of time during which something has existence.
- 14A period of time during which something has existence.
- 15A period of time during which something has existence.
- 16A period of time during which something has existence.
- 17Animation; spirit; vivacity.
- 18Animation; spirit; vivacity.
- 19A biography.
- 20Nature, reality, and the forms that exist in it.
- 21An opportunity for existence.
- 22An opportunity for existence.
- 23An opportunity for existence.
- 24An opportunity for existence.
- 25The life insurance industry.
- 26A life assured under a life assurance policy (equivalent to the policy itself for a single life contract).
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”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ilfe,lfie,lief,liffe,llife
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for life
Misspelling Variants of "life"
Frequency rank: #134 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: