real live
25
3.9
- adjective
- /riːəl laɪv/
- Informal
:
de carne y hueso
- In his dress blue uniform, he could easily be mistaken for a real live naval officer.
- a real live person
- a real live human
- a real live being
You know, this is a real live issue.
- You know, this is a real live issue.
- So this is a real live, you know, crisis at at the time.
- We're watching, we're watching real live movies every single day.
- So when that camera guy was in there, there were real live customers getting shows.
- Every single second there is millions of people being embarrassed by the confusion of real live staff.
- You know, I mean, I could go on and on about my ideas about live ideas and dead ideas, but this is real live thinking.
Examples
-
A real live hero.
-
There is a a real live, honest to goodness functioning test phone that boots into Android.
-
And today, we're doing it with real, live ones in the wild.
-
So I went to find one with a real live human being.
-
Sounds like you got yourself a real live one.
-
We're back in a real live theater.
-
Everyone wants to see a real live dinosaur.
Fiction book (2001) -
So these are real live cabs with real live taxi drivers with real live paying passengers going into them.
-
I saw a real live lion at the zoo yesterday.
-
The documentary featured real live wildlife in their natural habitat.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Happening in real life, not imagined
∞
1.4
Real and existing in fact, not imagined or expected
218
3.8
Something that is real and trustworthy, not a fake
1
7.9
Truly real and not fake
1
8.1
Clearly real and not fake to show you really mean it
1
8.5
To say that something is really true or serious
Antonyms
How Real
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'real' (genuine, actually existing) + 'live' (happening now/in person), so the combined sense of something genuinely occurring or not fictional is inferable from the parts. This is a transparent, adjectival emphasis pattern common in English and cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily understand it.
Etymology
The phrase real live uses two plain words: real means not fake and live means 'alive' or happening now. People say real live to make a strong picture that someone or something is actually there and not made up or recorded.