生命
Meaning in Englishlife, vital existence
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Word context
What it means
What does 生命 mean? 生命 (seimei) means life: the complex condition and processes that distinguish living organisms from nonliving matter, encompassing biological existence, vitality, and the capacity for growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli.
Main meanings
- 1. Vital energy or vigor as an attribute of living things, emphasizing activity rather than mere existence.
- 2. Biological life as a category, referring to living organisms collectively or the phenomenon of life in general.
- 3. Duration or span of life, used to discuss how long a living thing endures.
- 4. Technical or institutional sense when part of compounds in medicine, science and law, marking subjects related to "life" in formal registers.
- 5. Figurative use for survival, continuity or the essential principle that keeps something functioning.
How to use it
Used across formal and academic writing, medicine, law and philosophy to talk about life as a concept or category; in everyday speech it is more abstract and formal than more intimate words for life, and it commonly appears in technical compounds and news or scholarly contexts rather than casual expressions.
Variants and close terms
- 命 (inochi): personal life, fate, the life of an individual.
- 生命力 (seimeiryoku): life force, vitality.
- 生存 (seizon): survival, continued existence.
- 生活 (seikatsu): daily life, living (lifestyle, routine).
- 死 (shi): death (antonym).
Composition
- 生 (sei): birth, life, raw; denotes living, growth and origin.
- 命 (mei): life, fate, command; carries senses of allotted life or vital mandate.
- Combined, the pair focuses the idea of living existence and the vital principle that constitutes a living being.
Origin
The compound arrived in Japanese as a Sino-Japanese word borrowed from classical Chinese vocabulary; it entered literary, religious and medical discourse in premodern Japan and became a standard term for biological and philosophical notions of life in modern scientific and legal usage.
Word class
noun (名詞, Sino-Japanese compound / 漢語)