| / English Dictionary |
LIFELESS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Deprived of life; no longer living
Example:
a lifeless body
Synonyms:
exanimate; lifeless
Classified under:
Similar:
dead (no longer having or seeming to have or expecting to have life)
Derivation:
lifelessness (not having life)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Not having the capacity to support life
Example:
a lifeless planet
Classified under:
Similar:
dead (not showing characteristics of life especially the capacity to sustain life; no longer exerting force or having energy or heat)
Derivation:
lifelessness (not having life)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Lacking animation or excitement or activity
Example:
it was a lifeless party until she arrived
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
unanimated (not animated or enlivened; dull)
Derivation:
lifelessness (not having life)
lifelessness (a state of no motion or movement)
Sense 4
Meaning:
Destitute or having been emptied of life or living beings
Example:
after the dance the littered and lifeless ballroom echoed hollowly
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
empty (holding or containing nothing)
Derivation:
lifelessness (a state of no motion or movement)
Context examples:
Mr. Rochester held the candle over him; I recognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless face—the stranger, Mason: I saw too that his linen on one side, and one arm, was almost soaked in blood.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
When he did throw his head back, and take it off quick, I had a horrible fear, I confess, of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr. Topsawyer, and fall lifeless on the carpet.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He advised her against it, thought the jar too great; but no, he reasoned and talked in vain, she smiled and said, I am determined I will: he put out his hands; she was too precipitate by half a second, she fell on the pavement on the Lower Cobb, and was taken up lifeless!
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Yet it seemed a lonely, lifeless sort of house, for no children frolicked on the lawn, no motherly face ever smiled at the windows, and few people went in and out, except the old gentleman and his grandson.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
But I was not the witness of his grief, for I was lifeless and did not recover my senses for a long, long time.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Negore looked upon them with satisfaction, and in his mind's eye he saw them crushed and lifeless at the passage up the rocks.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
But the men were no longer eager as they pulled and hauled, and I heard curses amongst them, which left their lips smothered and as heavy and lifeless as were they.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
His first glance was for Buck, over whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting up a howl, while Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
The examination, the presence of the magistrate and witnesses, passed like a dream from my memory when I saw the lifeless form of Henry Clerval stretched before me.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
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