living death

noun

"living-death" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“living death” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
12
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A condition of suffering, solitude, or impairment so extreme as to deprive one's existence of all happiness and meaning.

Corpus desk

Index EN-living-death · living death · English

living death · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-MEGA 12 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "L" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for living death
PropertyValue
Headwordliving death
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters12
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “living death” in English

living deathranks outside the top 100,000 English headwords, in the long tail of specialist, archaic, or seldom-used vocabulary, exactly the territory where a reader stops mid-sentence to double-check spelling.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

living death is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A condition of suffering, solitude, or impairment so extreme as to deprive one's existence of all happiness and meaning.".

living death has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No documented word history exists for this headword, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is living death, spelled L-I-V-I-N-G- -D-E-A-T-H.

Definition

  1. 1
    A condition of suffering, solitude, or impairment so extreme as to deprive one's existence of all happiness and meaning.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how living death appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. La[dy Anne]. Neuer hung poiſon on a fouler toade, Out of my ſight thou doeſt infect my eies. Glo[ucester]. Thine eies ſweete Lady haue infected mine. La[dy Anne]. Would they were baſiliſkes to ſtrike thee dead. Glo[ucester]. I would they were that I might die at once, For now they kill me with a liuing death: […]
  2. Mr Tulliver, who had begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this living death throughout the critical hours when the noise of the sale came nearest to his chamber.

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "living death"?
"living death" is spelled L-I-V-I-N-G- -D-E-A-T-H.
What does "living death" mean?
As a noun, "living death" means: A condition of suffering, solitude, or impairment so extreme as to deprive one's existence of all happiness and meaning.
What language does "living death" come from?
"living death" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list