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life class

life class

1 6.1
An art class where students draw, paint, or sculpt a live person who holds a pose often nude
  • noun
  • /laɪf klæs/
  • NSFW
translation icon : clase de modelo
  • I am taking a still life class at school, and it has been a pain in the bootie... but this... just totally simplified my life... especially as a single mom to five kids... if you have any ideas on converting your garage into a studio on the cheap, please let me know! LOL

Examples

  • She gained confidence in her artistic skills during her life class with a professional model.

  • He was right about holding coed life classes, and he was wrong to require his students to get naked for each other.

    Fiction book (1998)
  • If I understand what drives you, it makes it easier to look for commonalities we share, and those are the things they teach you to look for in work-life classes long past high school.

    Blog text (34)
  • On Dobie's 28th birthday, she gave him a six-month membership to Weight Watchers and even enrolled herself in a Cooking for Life class at the YMCA.

    Fiction book (1996)
  • In my life class, we practiced drawing the human form from a nude model.

  • Many artists attend a life class to improve their ability to capture the human body accurately.

Synonyms

art class
vslife class
27 1.0

A lesson where students learn to draw, paint or make sculptures

focuses on working from a live human model, usually nude

Surface Forms

life class singular
life classes plural

Morphology

life + class

The intended sense (‘an art class with a live human model’) is only partially derivable from 'life' + 'class' because 'life' must be understood in the specialized sense of 'living/model from life' rather than the basic sense 'period of existence'; a B1 learner who knows only the common meanings is likely to interpret it as a class about 'life' or life topics. There are cross-linguistic parallels (e.g. 'drawing from life'), so some learners may infer the meaning, but the specialized usage and potential for misinterpretation make it not fully transparent.

Etymology

Life class comes from art lessons where students draw or paint from a 'live human model'. The word life here means a living person, so the phrase now means an art class with a real model, often nude.