Word.ws English Dictionary

life of the party

life of the party noun: a person who participates in entertainment events in a very enthusiastic manner and who has a leading role in inspiring others to join in the spirit of festivity.

Noun

the life of the party

  1. (idiomatic) A person who participates in entertainment events in a very enthusiastic manner and who has a leading role in inspiring others to join in the spirit of festivity.
    • ‘You were the life of the party last night, Ma'am, you know,’ returned Flowers, ‘and you suffer for it, to-day, you see.’1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, chapter 37, in Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC
    • Tom was the life of the party, and the way he "cut up" was "simply awful," as Nellie declared.1915, Edward Stratemeyer, chapter 30, in The Rover Boys in Business
  2. (broadly, figuratively) A sociable and vivacious person.

Synonyms of life of the party

Questions about life of the party

What does life of the party mean?
Life of the party means a person who participates in entertainment events in a very enthusiastic manner and who has a leading role in inspiring others to join in the spirit of festivity.
What part of speech is life of the party?
Life of the party is a noun.

Words near life of the party in the dictionary

  1. life nets
  2. life of its own
  3. life of O'Reilly
  4. life of Reilly
  5. life of Riley
  6. life of the party
  7. life off
  8. life or death
  9. life partner
  10. life partners
  11. life path

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: life of the party (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-life of the party.ogg.

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