lifetime

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈlaɪf.taɪm/^[1]

Etymology

It is Middle English liftime, formed from life and time.^[2][3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The duration of one's life: about 1220 in the OED, the early 13th century in Etymonline.^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

It was often written as two words or hyphenated, and as one word from the 19th century.^[2] For a person's span of life Middle English writers also used lifeday (Old English lifdæg), lifewhile and lifesith “life-journey”.^[2] The adjective use, as in a lifetime ban, is from 1834 in MWU.^[3] The period during which a thing exists or works is a later sense,^[6] and in physics the average life of an unstable particle or state is a technical one.^[7] Colloquially a lifetime is a very long time, and the chance of a lifetime one that comes only once.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1220 – the duration of one's life.^[5]
• 1834 – as a modifier.^[3]
• 19th century – written as one word.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The length of time a person or animal is alive.
2. The length of time that something exists or works.
3. (informal) A very long time.
4. (physics) The average time an unstable particle or state exists.

Related words

• life
• time
• lifelong

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
7. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins