real life

See also: real-life

English

Pronunciation

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Noun

real life (countable and uncountable, plural real lives)

  1. Life outside of a contrived or fantastical environment; often used in comparison to events depicted in drama.
  2. A person or thing that exists in reality (vs. fictional).
    • 2011, Julia DeVillers, Jennifer Roy, Take Two:
      I knew it was just a silly quiz, but it was annoying that I couldn't even get a crush match in a magazine—or real life.
  4. (by extension; sometimes proscribed) Life outside the Internet.
  5. (by extension) Pressing day-to-day commitments.
    I kept meaning to look for a better-paying job, but real life intervened.

Usage notes

Use of sense 3 is sometimes discouraged due to its implication that internet interactions are less "real" than offline ones.[1]

Derived terms

  • real life experience
  • IRL

Descendants

  • → German: Reallife
  • → Korean: 리얼라이프 (rieollaipeu)

Translations

See also

References

  1. ^ Gretchen McCulloch (2019) “A New Metaphor”, in Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, New York: Riverhead Books, →ISBN, pages 397–398:
    The internet has become ambient, an inescapable part of the broader culture. That's why I've avoided referring to things that aren't online as “real life”. The internet has become real life. Popular culture and internet culture overlap more than they diverge. True, “irl” and “real life” are common expressions, and it's quite possible that they may stick around with their original connotation washed out through continued use. But that hasn't quite happened yet, and in the meantime there are real harms to not recognizing the common humanity of the real people who are touched or harmed at the other end of our digital messages.
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