living death

English

Pronunciation

  • Audio (General Australian):(file)

Noun

living death (usually uncountable, plural living deaths)

  1. (idiomatic) A condition of suffering, solitude, or impairment so extreme as to deprive one's existence of all happiness and meaning.
    • c. 1593 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Valentine Sims [and Peter Short] for Andrew Wise, […], published 1597, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], signature B2, recto:
       La[dy Anne]. Neuer hung poiſon on a fouler toade,
      Out of my ſight thou doeſt infect my eies.
       Glo[ucester]. Thine eies ſweete Lady haue infected mine.
       La[dy Anne]. Would they were baſiliſkes to ſtrike thee dead.
       Glo[ucester]. I would they were that I might die at once,
      For now they kill me with a liuing death: […]
    • 1860, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-knife”, in The Mill on the Floss […], volume II, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book III (The Downfall), page 82:
      Mr Tulliver, who had begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this living death throughout the critical hours when the noise of the sale came nearest to his chamber.
    • 1893, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Fall of the Catinats”, in The Refugees: A Tale of Two Continents, volume II, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, [part I (In the Old World)], page 188:
      If their creed were no longer tolerated, then, and if they remained true to it, they must either fly from the country or spend a living death tugging at an oar or working in a chain-gang upon the roads.
    • 1904, E. Phillips Oppenheim, chapter 9, in The Master Mummer:
      "[W]e cling so closely here to our own doctrine of isolation. . . ."
      "Isobel is intended, then?" I asked.
      "For the Church," Madame Richard answered. . . .
      "Madame," I answered, "Isobel is meant for life—not a living death."
    • 1988 March 21, Heart of Glory (Star Trek: The Next Generation) (Science Fiction), Paramount Domestic Television, →OCLC:
      WORF: When my foster brother and I were of age, we entered the Starfleet Academy. He hated it and returned to Gault. I stayed.
      KONMEL: You have not spent much time among your own kind.
      WORF: Hardly none.
      KORRIS: So, when the night was still and quiet, and the sound of the blood rushing through your veins filled your ears, the only way to silence it was to slip out into the night and, like the hunter that spawned you, join in the struggle of life and death. You were unable
      KONMEL: And those around you did not understand. You frightened them.
      KORRIS: They shunned you. Cursed you. Called you vile names, and you knew not why. Even now do you know why you are driven? Why you cannot relent or repent or confess or abstain? How could you know? There have been no other Klingons to lead you to that knowledge.
      WORF: Yes. Yes, those feelings are part of me. But I control them. They do not rule me.
      KORRIS: Yes. To fit in, the humans demand that you change the one thing that you cannot change. Yet, because you cannot, you do. That too is the mark of the warrior. You said that I mock you. I do not. I salute you.
      KONMEL: But against whom do you test yourself? Against what enemy do you charge into battle?
      WORF: I have been in battle.
      KORRIS: Then you understand.
      WORF: Yes, I do.
      KORRIS: Brother, this peace, this alliance, is like a living death to warriors like us.
      KONMEL: You're right, we lied to your Commander. We commandeered that freighter and left the crew behind, and we were in search of a place where we could live our lives like true Klingons.
    • 2004 November 7, John Schwartz, James Estrin, “Living for Today, Locked in a Paralyzed Body”, in New York Times, retrieved 12 June 2014:
      A.L.S., or Lou Gehrig's disease, is often described as a kind of living death in which the body goes flaccid while the mind remains intact and acutely aware.

See also

References

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.