Word.ws English Dictionary

not long for this world

not long for this world adjective: unlikely to endure for much more time.

Adjective

not long for this world (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) Unlikely to endure for much more time.
    • Townsend went there with us, but found himself so unwell that he went home very early. His cough has return'd, with several disagreeable symptoms. I fear exceedingly that he is not long for this world.1787, John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor, Life in a New England Town, 1787, 1788: Diary of John Quincy Adams (1903), page 109
    • He thinks that said soul will have to be resuscitated from its asphyxia; that if it prove irresuscitable, the man is not long for this world.1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. 6, Hero-Worship”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book I (Proem)

Forms of not long for this world

alternative formnot long for the world

Questions about not long for this world

What does not long for this world mean?
Not long for this world means unlikely to endure for much more time.
What part of speech is not long for this world?
Not long for this world is an adjective.

Words near not long for this world in the dictionary

  1. not leave one's thoughts
  2. not likely
  3. not long
  4. not long for
  5. not long for the world
  6. not long for this world
  7. not look a day over
  8. not make any bones about
  9. not much
  10. not much chop
  11. not much cop

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: not long for this world (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-not long for this world.ogg.

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