livelong
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English live long, leve-long, lefe long (as in Alle the lefe longe daye), equivalent to lief + long. Compare Dutch heel den lieven langen dag (“all the livelong day”), German die liebe lange Nacht (“the livelong night”).
Adjective edit
livelong
- total, complete, whole
- I've been workin' on the railroad, all the livelong day.
- a. 1887 (date written), Emily Dickinson, “I'm Nobody! Who are you?”, in Mabel Loomis Todd and T[homas] W[entworth] Higginson, editors, Poems, Second Series, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, published 1891, page 21:
- How dreary to be somebody! / How public, like a frog / To tell your name the livelong day / To an admiring bog!
- (obsolete) lasting; durable.
- 1630, John Milton, On Shakespeare:
- Thou, in our wonder and astonishment, Thou hast built thyself a live-long monument.
Related terms edit
Translations edit
Noun edit
livelong (plural livelongs)
Translations edit
the orpine, Sedum telephium
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