Word.ws English Dictionary

for one's life

for one's life prepositional phrase: desperately.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Desperately
    • Basel continued to defend for their lives while occasionally threatening on the break.2011 December 7, David Ornstein, “FC Basel 2 - 1 Man Utd”, in BBC Sport
  2. (idiomatic) Whatsoever, at all
    • No backup plan / And I can't sing for my life2025, Fraxiom, “now 2”, performed by Food House

Questions about for one's life

What does for one's life mean?
For one's life means desperately.
What part of speech is for one's life?
For one's life is a prepositional phrase.

Words near for one's life in the dictionary

  1. for one reason or another
  2. for one thing
  3. for one's eyes only
  4. for one's foams
  5. for one's heart
  6. for one's life
  7. for one's liking
  8. for one's own good
  9. for one's own hand
  10. for one's own part
  11. for one's part

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: for one's life (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-for one's life.ogg.

Cite this entry: “for one's life.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/for_one%27s_life. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.