living death

Noun

living death (usually uncountable, plural living deaths)

1. (idiomatic, usually) A condition of suffering, solitude, or impairment so extreme as to deprive one's existence of all happiness and meaning.
   • La[dy Anne]. Neuer hung poiſon on a fouler toade,
     Out of my ſight thou doeſt infect my eies.
     Glo[ucester]. Thine eies ſweete Lady haue infected mine.
     La[dy Anne]. Would they were baſiliſkes to ſtrike thee dead.
     Glo[ucester]. I would they were that I might die at once,
     For now they kill me with a...c. 1593 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Valentine Sims [and Peter Short] for Andrew Wise, […], published 1597, →OCLC...
   • Mr Tulliver, who had begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this living death throughout the critical hours when the noise of the sale came nearest to...1860, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-knife”, in The Mill on the Floss […], volume II, Edinburgh; London: William...