Word.ws English Dictionary

real life

real life noun: life outside of a contrived or fantastical environment; often used in comparison to events depicted in drama.

Noun

real life (countable and uncountable, plural real lives)

  1. Life outside of a contrived or fantastical environment; often used in comparison to events depicted in drama.
    • Near-synonyms: real world, reality
    Synonyms:
    real world, reality
  2. (broadly, figuratively, proscribed, sometimes) Life outside of the Internet.
    • Near-synonyms: real world, reality, real reality (intentional pleonasm under certain circumstances)
  3. (broadly, figuratively) Pressing day-to-day commitments.
    • I kept meaning to look for a better-paying job, but real life intervened.

real life meaning in Arabic, Indonesian and Thai

real life in Arabic

life outside of a contrived or fantastical environment
حَيَاة وَاقِعِيَّة ḥayāh wāqiʕiyya, حَيَاة حَقِيقِيَّة ḥayāh ḥaqīqiyya

real life in Indonesian

life outside of a contrived or fantastical environment
kehidupan nyata

real life in Thai

life outside of a contrived or fantastical environment
ชีวิตจริง

Synonyms of real life

Forms of real life

pluralreal lives

Words formed from real life

Questions about real life

What does real life mean?
Real life means life outside of a contrived or fantastical environment; often used in comparison to events depicted in drama.
What is real life in Arabic?
Real life in Arabic is حَيَاة وَاقِعِيَّة (ḥayāh wāqiʕiyya), حَيَاة حَقِيقِيَّة (ḥayāh ḥaqīqiyya). See Real life meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is real life?
Real life is a noun.
What is the plural of real life?
The plural of real life is real lives.

Words near real life in the dictionary

  1. real image
  2. real images
  3. real jam
  4. real ledger
  5. real ledgers
  6. real life
  7. real line
  8. real lines
  9. real live
  10. real lives
  11. real Macoy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: real 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-real-life.ogg.

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