Word.ws English Dictionary

lives

UK/lɪvz/

lives is the third-person singular simple present indicative of live.

lives is the plural of life.

Meaning of live

Verb

live (third-person singular simple present lives, present participle living, simple past and past participle lived)

  1. (intransitive) To be alive; to have life.
    • He's not expected to live for more than a few months.
  2. (intransitive) To have permanent residence somewhere, to inhabit, to reside.
    • I live at 2a Acacia Avenue. At that time I'd been living in a camper for about six months.
    Synonyms:
    range
    1. (informal, intransitive) (of an object) to have its proper place; to normally be stored.
      • I washed your gravy boat. Where does it live?
  3. (intransitive) To survive; to persevere; to continue.
    • When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,
      ⁠And home to Mary’s house return’d, […]
      ‘Where wert thou, brother, those four days?’
      ⁠There lives no record of reply,
      ⁠Which telling what it is to die
      Had surely added praise to praise.1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XXXI”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 50
    Synonyms:
    go on
  4. (intransitive) To endure in memory; to escape oblivion.
    • Her memory lives in that song.
  5. (excessive, intransitive) To cope.
    • You'll just have to live with it! I can't live in a world without you.

See all 38 meanings of live

Meaning of life

Noun

life (usually uncountable, plural lives)

  1. (usually) The state of organisms preceding their death, characterized by biological processes such as metabolism and reproduction and distinguishing them from inanimate objects; the state of being alive and living.
    • I want my kids to live a good life. He gave up on life.
    1. (usually) The status possessed by any of a number of entities, including animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and sometimes viruses, which have the properties of replication and metabolism.
  2. (usually) The animating principle or force that keeps an inorganic thing or concept metaphorically alive (dynamic, relevant, etc) and makes it a “living document”, “living constitution”, etc.
    • The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.1881, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., The Common Law
  3. (usually) Lifeforms, generally or collectively.
    • It's life, but not as we know it. She discovered plant life on the planet. The rover discovered signs of life on the alien world.
  4. (countable, usually) A living being; the fact of a particular individual being alive. (Chiefly when indicating individuals were lost (died) or saved.)
    • Many lives were lost during the war. Her quick thinking saved many dogs' lives.
  5. (usually) Existence.
    • Life is meaningless and we are all going to die.

See all 31 meanings of life

Phrases with lives

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Words that rhyme with lives

Questions about lives

What is lives the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Lives is the third-person singular simple present indicative of live.
How do you pronounce lives?
Lives is pronounced /lɪvz/ (UK).

Words near lives in the dictionary

  1. liverying
  2. liveryman
  3. liverymen
  4. liverywoman
  5. liverywomen
  6. lives
  7. lives a lie
  8. lives a little
  9. lives and breathes
  10. lives and dies by
  11. lives and learns

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lives (page history and authors); live (page history and authors); 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-lives-verb.ogg.

Cite this entry: “lives.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lives. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.