thread of life

Noun

thread of life (plural threads of life)

1. (Greek) A metaphor for a person’s lifespan, as generated by Clotho, measured out by Lachesis, and terminated by Atropos.
2. (figuratively) DNA.
   • His book also tells of the intense competition between various research workers and groups during the years in which the secrets of "the spiral thread of life" were finally unravelled.1998, Kari Cantell, The Story of Interferon: The Ups and Downs in the Life of a Scientist, →ISBN, page vii
   • For this reason DNA has been termed the thread of life; the progressive elucidation of its structure and function have rightly been biology's central preoccupation since 1950.2002, Gustav Joseph Victor Nossal, Ross Leon Coppel, Reshaping Life: Key Issues in Genetic Engineering, →ISBN, page 1
3. (figuratively) The link of inheritance from past to present.
   • DOWN the unimaginable corridors of geologic time the thread of life has passed from generation to generation, ever varying but unbroken.1953 September 7, “The Endless Thread of Life”, in LIFE magazine, volume 35, number 10, page 56
   • The most important lesson of the full year course in ancient history was the inculcation of the sweep of time: that a nation's life was not lived in isolation from its neighbors, that the acts of men have great and grave influences on their own times and for the future, and that the thread of life...1991, David Warren Saxe, Social Studies in Schools: A History of the Early Years, →ISBN, page 64
4. (figuratively) Destiny, fate.
   • Argo, their thred of life is ſpun.1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
   • […] he yearned more and more every moment, for love was stronger than he, and had seized his soul altogether, even when he was at the house of Aulus. The Parcae weave the thread of life for others; but love, yearning, and melancholy had woven it for him.1897, Jeremiah Curtin, Quo vadis : a narrative of the time of Nero, Boston: Little, Brown, translation of original by Henryk Sienkiewicz, →OCLC, page 274