living death
3
9.3
- noun
- Informal
:
muerte en vida
- Porter also emphasizes how ecclesiastical leaders portrayed leprosy as a living death and even developed a special religious service for lepers that simulated a funeral mass.
A horrific death, a living death within the fire of the tower, smelting mercury.
- A horrific death, a living death within the fire of the tower, smelting mercury.
Examples
-
Whether living death luxuriates in lavish penthouses or languishes in squalor, it always remains dead.
Blog text (7) -
So even in our living death state of existence, God's Word is still our one and only source.
Blog text (7) -
It's living death for me if in our house everything becomes a question of yours and mine.
Fiction book (1992) -
Are you looking for the key to escape your living death, Kevin?
-
It seems like a living death to me.
Fiction book (1992) -
Because we can do nothing in our living death state, God's Word is sent to us to empower us to make the life-receiving, God-approved choices.
Blog text (7) -
God commands us, sin-corrupted and very imperfect people, to repent of our living death state and receive eternal life.
Blog text (7) -
On discovering his wife's philandering, the husband retreats to his bed and remains there, in a kind of living death, while his wife dutifully assumes the role of nurse by night and continues her sexual encounters by day.
Academic text (2000) -
For Labanyi, the "fallen" Republic is to be admired; the degeneracy of the schoolchildren is far preferable to the "living death" represented by the false paradise.
Academic text (1990) -
Many believe that the isolation of solitary confinement is a living death, devoid of hope and connection.
Synonyms
636
2.8
Pain and trouble that a person feels in the body or mind
Antonyms
How Miserable
- Informal
3
9.3
135
3.9
636
2.8
310
2.8
42
1.8
119
3.2
Surface Forms
Morphology
living + death
The phrase is an oxymoronic but directly compositional combination: a life described as 'death' yields the interpretable sense of being alive yet feeling dead or utterly miserable. This figurative pattern (life that resembles death) is cross-linguistically common and follows straightforward semantic composition, so a B1 learner who knows 'living' and 'death' can readily infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Living death paints a clear picture: a person is still living but feels like they are already 'dead'. That's why people use it for a life full of pain or unhappiness, as if someone is 'alive' but not really living.