Word.ws English Dictionary

living

/ˈlɪvɪŋ/

living is the present participle of live.

Adjective

living (not comparable)

  1. Having life; alive.
    • a living, breathing child
    • Respect for the dead does not preclude respect for the living.
    Synonyms:
    extant
  2. In use or existing.
    • Hunanese is a living language.
    • The cab pulled up in front of a tumbledown cheap ‘villa’ in an unfinished cheap neighbourhood, — the whole place a living monument of the defeat of the speculative builder.1897, Richard Marsh, The Beetle
  3. True to life.
    • This is the living image of Fidel Castro.
  4. Of rock or stone, existing in its original state and place.
    • This we followed for about five paces, when it suddenly widened out into a small chamber, about eight feet square, and hewn out of the living rock.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
  5. Continually updated; not static
    • HTML is a living standard.
  6. Used as an intensifier.
    • He almost beat the living daylights out of me.

Noun

living (countable and uncountable, plural livings)

  1. (uncountable) The state of being alive.
  2. Financial means; a means of maintaining life; livelihood
    • it's a living
    • What do you do for a living?
  3. A style of life.
    • plain living
    • The National Brewing Company declared that the Chesapeake Bay region was the Land of Pleasant Living.
  4. (with-definite-article) Those who are alive: living people.
    • in the land of the living
    • Glad to see you're still among the living! [good-humored greeting]
    Synonyms:
    quick
    Antonyms:
    dead, deceased, departed
  5. (canon law) A position in a church (usually the Church of England) that has attached to it a source of income; an ecclesiastical benefice.
    • A Rectory or Parſonage, is a Spirituall liuing, compoſed of Land, Tythe, and other Oblations of the people, ſeparate or dedicate to God in any Congregation, for the ſeruice of his Church there, and for the maintenance of the Gouernour or Miniſter thereof, to vvhoſe charge the ſame is committed.1616, Henry Spelman, De Non Temerandis Ecclesijs [Churches Not to Be Violated]. A Tract of the Rights and Respect Due unto Churches. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Iohn Beale, →OCLC, pages 2–3
    • The patron of the living who had the right to nominate a particular priest might make the choice, but the living was actually granted by the local bishop.2015, GR Evans, Edward Hicks: Pacifist Bishop at War

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

Synonyms of living

1 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

Forms of living

plurallivings

Origin of living

From Middle English livynge, libbyng, livinde, livand, livende, libbinde, libbende, from Old English lifiġende, lifiende, libbende, from Proto-West Germanic *libbjandī, from Proto-Germanic *libjandz (“living”), present participle of Proto-Germanic *libjaną (“to live”), equivalent to live + -ing. Cognate with West Frisian libbend (“living”), Dutch levend (“living”), German lebend (“living”), Swedish levande (“living”), Icelandic lifandi (“living”).

From Middle English livynge, libbynge, equivalent to live + -ing. Cognate with Middle Dutch levinge, (whence Dutch leving (“way of life, living”)), Middle Low German lēvinge (“living”).

Words formed from living

Phrases with living

113 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with living

Questions about living

What does living mean?
Living means having life; alive.
What is living the present participle of?
Living is the present participle of live.
What part of speech is living?
Living can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce living?
Living is pronounced /ˈlɪvɪŋ/.

Words near living in the dictionary

  1. Livie
  2. livier
  3. liviers
  4. livin
  5. livin'
  6. living
  7. living a lie
  8. living a little
  9. living and breathing
  10. living and dying by
  11. living and learning

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: living (page history and authors); live (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Back ache-living.wav, en-us-living.ogg.

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