life cycle
- noun
- /laɪf ˈsaɪkəl/
- The life cycle of a butterfly consists of four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult.
- life cycle cost
- life cycle stage
- complete life cycle
Like food is meant to have a life cycle, right?
- Like food is meant to have a life cycle, right?
- You know, that's the natural life cycle of the online celebrity.
- Actual stuff like the life cycle of a parasite.
- So in this process of the life cycle of our food, the microbes are in play.
- And so let's just spend a moment talking about the life cycle of stars.
- One is that art forms have a natural life cycle.
- Like you guys have kind of given full thought to the the whole life cycle of artwork and storage.
- The civilizations go through a life cycle.
Examples
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Seventy percent of the life cycle cost is after the initial sale.
Academic text (1999) -
Of course, some things were pretty complicated: the life cycle of the heartworm, for instance.
Fiction book (1999) -
The beginning of a new life cycle.
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And so let's just spend a moment talking about the life cycle of stars.
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The life cycle of the fruit fly.
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We also need to consider the entire life cycle of products when we talk about resource use.
Fiction book (1995) -
For those of you that did your homework, today, we are going over the life cycle of the frog.
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Their goal is to be in position to collect data throughout the entire life cycle of a tornado.
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Lately, rumors that Dinner Conversation had reached the end of its life cycle swirled around the studio daily.
Fiction book (2002) -
Apollos characteristically have a long life cycle, an adaptation to the short summer season.
Academic text (2011)
Synonyms
A record of events and experiences a person or animal goes through
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'life' (period of existence) combined with 'cycle' (a repeating sequence of stages) yields the sequence of stages an organism or product goes through. This noun-noun compound follows a standard, cross-linguistically common pattern (e.g., ciclo de vida, cycle de vie), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Life cycle comes from the simple picture of life as a circle or wheel: life moves through a repeated cycle of stages like birth, growth, reproduction and death. So the phrase means the series of stages something goes through from 'beginning' to 'end'.