Alive means living — still breathing, still going. The wasp on the windowsill that you were sure was dead moves one leg; the plant nobody watered for a month puts out a new leaf.
The grammar catches learners out: alive comes after the verb, never in front of a noun. You say the fish is still alive, and for the other position you use living or live — a living creature, live fish. It stretches past bodies: a street is alive with people, a language is kept alive by children who speak it, a room comes alive when the music starts. Fixed phrases carry it too — alive and well, alive and kicking, and eaten alive, which is what mosquitoes do to you on a warm evening. The opposite is dead, and there is nothing in between.
1adjectivealiveLiving; not dead.~76%
“The bird was stunned but still alive.”
2adjectivefullFull of energy, movement or feeling.~2%
“By ten o'clock the square was alive with music and smoke from the grills.”
3adjectiveexistingStill existing; not forgotten or finished.~22%
“They keep the old language alive by teaching it to the children.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 9 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
In Old English this was two words, on līfe — in life. Say them together for a few hundred years and they fuse into alive. That old shape is why alive still behaves like a phrase and stands after the verb. Dutch does the same thing with in leven, German with am Leben.
Middle English
alyve
English, today
alive
Built from
From Middle English alyve. From Middle English alyve, alive, alife, olive, olife, on live, on life, from Old English on līfe (“alive”) literally “in life" or "in (the) body”, from on (“on, in”) + līfe, dative singular of līf (“life”). In this sense, replaced Old English cwic (whence English quick). Equivalent to a- + life. Compare Dutch in leven (“alive”) literally “in life”, German am Leben (“alive”) literally “at life" or "at living”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA