facts of life
15
3.4
- noun
- /fæks əv laɪf/
- NSFW
:
educación sexual
- One day, it will be you sitting here telling some young Turk the facts of life.
- become a fact of life
Examples
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Understanding the facts of life is essential for making informed decisions about relationships.
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Trouble is, nobody ever learned you the facts of life.
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Someone has to explain the facts of life to you.
Fiction book (1990) -
You are familiar with the facts of life?
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We are wondering, has anybody instructed Lolita in the facts of life?
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“People have got to live with the facts of life.”
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Sonny boy, these are the facts of life, and it wasn't your father who invented them.
Fiction book (1992) -
At a young age, it's important for parents to teach their children the facts of life in a respectful manner.
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The teacher explained the facts of life to her students during the health class.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase literally combines 'facts' + 'life' so a learner who knows the constituents can infer a general meaning of 'basic truths about life', which makes the expression partly transparent. However, its conventional English use is often restricted to sex/reproduction (a euphemistic or culturally specific domain), which is not directly predictable from the words alone and varies across languages, so the exact intended meaning may not be clear to a B1 learner without prior exposure.
Etymology
Facts of life may come from the idea of telling simple, important facts about how life begins and works. That's why people use it to mean the 'basic information about sex and how babies are made' that parents or schools give.