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professional life

professional life

32 2.8
The time a person spends working in a job or career
  • noun
  • /prəˈfɛʃənl laɪf/
translation icon : vida profesional
  • During her professional life, she worked in various roles that contributed to her growth and expertise.
  • personal and professional life
  • enrich your own professional life
  • successful professional life

This week has been kind of tough in regards to my professional life with the podcast.

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Examples

  • I spend much of my professional life dealing with the darker side of human nature.

    Fiction book (1991)
  • And for the first time in my professional life, I'm a part of something I believe in.

    Fiction book (1996)
  • You will have a better professional life with a good personal life

  • The biggest battle of our professional lives all comes down to today.

  • Your whole professional life may be at stake.

  • How do you know it is time to make a major change in your professional life?

    Academic text (1995)
  • I think it's hard when you have two people who are extremely focused on their professional lives and neither one of them has time for the relationship.

  • Dr. Coletti's professional life is not on trial here.

  • Numerous examples exist of female astronomers whose professional lives were thus ended.

    Academic text (1993)
  • Sanchez's essay then provides a glimpse into the professional lives of the students he trains to do precisely that.

    Academic text (1999)

Synonyms

career
vsprofessional life
1.8

The jobs a person does during their working life

is the whole period spent working across industries and fields
career path
vsprofessional life
25 2.7

A series of jobs someone has during their working life that lead to higher roles

is the total time someone spends working not only the sequence
business life
vsprofessional life
2 3.5

Part of a person's life spent working in business or a job

is broader covering jobs beyond commerce or industry

Surface Forms

Morphology

professional + life

The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'professional' (relating to one’s occupation or career) with 'life' (the period of existence), yielding the period of a person’s life spent working. This compositional pattern is straightforward and cross-linguistically common, so an average B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE meaning.

Etymology

The phrase professional life comes from the simple image of the part of your life that is about your professional role, the work and training you do. So it means the time and activities in a person's life that belong to 'work' or a chosen 'career'.