live

UK/ˈlɪv/US/ˈlɪv/

verbA16 meanings One of the most common words in English · #131 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: living, lived, lives

To live somewhere is to have your home there. 'I live in Leeds', 'she lives with her parents', 'they lived above the shop for eleven years'.

Live also means to be alive — he lived to ninety-two — and to spend your life a particular way: live quietly, live alone, live in fear of the phone ringing. Live ON is what you survive on, money or food: living on toast, living on four hundred a month. Live WITH is either sharing a home or putting up with something you cannot change. The real trap is the other live, spelled the same but rhyming with hive: a live broadcast, a live wire, live music. Same five letters, different word, different sound, and that one is an adjective.

Definitions of live

1verbliveTo have your home in a particular place.A1~21%
“They live in a flat above the bakery.”
2verbaliveTo be alive, or to stay alive.A2~16%
“Her grandmother lived to be a hundred and one.”
3verbspendTo spend your life in a particular way.B1~10%
“He lived quietly, and hardly anyone in the village knew his name.”
4verbsurviveTo survive on a particular supply of money or food.B1~2%
“The family lived on very little that winter.”
5adjectivehappeningRhyming with hive: happening now and broadcast as it happens, rather than recorded.B1~46%
“The match was shown live on Saturday night.”
6adjectivecarryingRhyming with hive: carrying an electric current.B2~5%
“Do not touch that wire — it is live.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

live and let live — to accept how other people choose to live instead of judging them
live up to something — to be as good as people expected you to be

Where it comes from

Live goes back through Old English libban, 'to live, be alive', to a Proto-Indo-European root *leyp- that meant 'to stick'. German leben, Dutch leven and Swedish leva are all the same word wearing other clothes. The step from sticking to living is shorter than it looks: to stick is to stay put, and to live is to still be here.

Proto-Indo-European
*leyp-
Middle English
lefe
English, today
live

Built from

lifian · Old English — to live; be alive

From Middle English lefe. From Middle English lefe, lifen, libbe, libben, live, luvien, lyven, from Old English libban, lifian (“to live; be alive”), from Proto-West Germanic libbjan, from Proto-Germanic libjaną (“to live”), from Proto-Indo-European leyp- (“to stick”). 2

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Verbs

Practise this word

live in the wild

An estimated audience of 1.9 billion people in 150 nations watched the live broadcast, nearly 40 percent of the world population.
Live Aid
According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, live action involves "real people or animals, not models, or images that are drawn, or produced by computer".
Live action
Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, has a musical guest, and is broadcast live with a studio audience.
Saturday Night Live
The event was seen live on pay-per-view in the United States, and was later released on home video.
UFC 38
Later, Brynhildr is said to live on Hindafjall, in a hall surrounded by wavering flames (vafrlogi).
Hindarfjall

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

the lifian family

live

live — used about once every 10 pages · #131 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of live

1verbliveTo have your home in a particular place.A1~21%

“They live in a flat above the bakery.”

2verbaliveTo be alive, or to stay alive.A2~16%

“Her grandmother lived to be a hundred and one.”

3verbspendTo spend your life in a particular way.B1~10%

“He lived quietly, and hardly anyone in the village knew his name.”

4verbsurviveTo survive on a particular supply of money or food.B1~2%

“The family lived on very little that winter.”

5adjectivehappeningRhyming with hive: happening now and broadcast as it happens, rather than recorded.B1~46%

“The match was shown live on Saturday night.”

6adjectivecarryingRhyming with hive: carrying an electric current.B2~5%

“Do not touch that wire — it is live.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.