Life

See also: life

English

Etymology 1

Proper noun

Life

1. (chiefly Christian Science) God.
   • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto XXXII, page 51:

     Then one deep love doth supersede
     ⁠All other, when her ardent gaze
     ⁠Roves from the living brother’s face,
     And rests upon the Life indeed.

2. (cellular automata) Conway's Game of Life.
   • 1988 January 26, David Hiebeler, “Fast way to update grids”, in comp.theory.cell-automata‎^[1] (Usenet):

     Basically, I'm looking for a fast (the fastest?) way of updating grids, where each cell has to look at an arbitrary number of its neighbors. I've seen some fast life-programs, but often they took advantage of particular quirks of the rules of Life.

   • 1999 May 13, Thomas Womack, “3D automata with Life-style objects”, in comp.theory.cell-automata‎^[2] (Usenet):

     Is there a known 3D totalistic or semi-totalistic automaton (Life is the latter sort - state at time t+1 depends on state at time t and count of neighbours) which exhibits the same sort of behaviour as Life (that is, a reasonable range of naturally-occuring^[sic] still lives and short-period oscillators)?

   • 2003 February 20, Rolf Wilms, “Fast implementation of core algorithm for Conway's Game of Life”, in comp.theory.cell-automata‎^[3] (Usenet):

     Maybe the RolfLife algorithm could be of value to someone implementing life i.e. in the vertex shader of a (DirectX 9) graphics card, where few lines of code and no LUT are favoured.

Derived terms

• Highlife
• Life-like cellular automaton
• Life without Death

Etymology 2

Variant of Leaf.

Proper noun

Life (plural Lifes)

1. A surname.

Statistics

• According to the 2010 United States Census, Life is the 37591^st most common surname in the United States, belonging to 592 individuals. Life is most common among White (79.73%) and Black/African American (13.51%) individuals.

Further reading

• Hanks, Patrick, editor (2003), “Life”, in Dictionary of American Family Names, volume 2, New York City: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 436.

Anagrams

• File, file, filé, flie, lief

Irish

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [l̠ʲɪfʲə]

Proper noun

an Life f (genitive na Life)

1. Liffey (a river in Ireland)