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Definition 2024


living_death

living death

English

Noun

living death (usually uncountable, plural living deaths)

  1. (idiomatic) A condition of suffering, solitude, or impairment so extreme as to deprive one's existence of all happiness and meaning.
    • c. 1593, William Shakespeare, Richard III, act 1, sc. 2:
      Lady Anne: Never hung poison on a fouler toad.
      Out of my sight! thou dost infect my eyes.
      Gloucester: Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.
      Lady Anne: Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead!
      Gloucester: I would they were, that I might die at once;
      For now they kill me with a living death.
    • 1860, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, ch. 6:
      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.
    • 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Refugees, ch. 23:
      If their creed were no longer tolerated, then, and if they remained true to it, they must either fly from the country or spend a living death tugging at an oar or working in a chain-gang upon the roads.
    • 1904, E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Master Mummer, ch. 9:
      "[W]e cling so closely here to our own doctrine of isolation. . . ."
      "Isobel is intended, then?" I asked.
      "For the Church," Madame Richard answered. . . .
      "Madame," I answered, "Isobel is meant for life—not a living death."
    • 2004 Nov. 7, John Schwartz and James Estrin, "Living for Today, Locked in a Paralyzed Body," New York Times (retrieved 12 June 2014):
      A.L.S., or Lou Gehrig's disease, is often described as a kind of living death in which the body goes flaccid while the mind remains intact and acutely aware.

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References