Word.ws English Dictionary

university of life

university of life noun: the real world as a source of instruction, as opposed to a formal education.

Noun

university of life (plural universities of life)

  1. (Ireland, UK, idiomatic) The real world as a source of instruction, as opposed to a formal education.
    • I learned all I need to know from the university of life, not from books.
    • [BEAUFOY:] We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university.
      BLOOM: (Indistinctly) University of life.1922 February 2, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC

Synonyms of university of life

Forms of university of life

pluraluniversities of life

Questions about university of life

What does university of life mean?
University of life means the real world as a source of instruction, as opposed to a formal education.
What part of speech is university of life?
University of life is a noun.
What is the plural of university of life?
The plural of university of life is universities of life.

Words near university of life in the dictionary

  1. university extensions
  2. University Hall
  3. University Hills
  4. university of applied sciences
  5. University of California-Davis
  6. university of life
  7. University of Spoiled Children
  8. university of technology
  9. university of the streets
  10. University of YouTube
  11. University Parks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: university of 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-university of life.ogg.

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