生活
Meaning in Englishliving, life; to live
Animated kanji stroke order
Related sentences
Word context
What it means
生活 means daily life or livelihood. It refers to the routines, habits, and practical conditions that make up how a person or household lives—covering everyday activities, housing, work and the material means required to sustain day-to-day existence.
Main meanings
- Everyday routine and habits distinct from special events or work-focused activities.
- A person's or group's standard of living or material circumstances (income, expenses, housing).
- The act of getting by or making a living when used with verbs and verbal constructions.
- A broad social concept used to compare lifestyles, public welfare, and community living conditions.
How to use it
Used across formal and casual contexts to talk about how people live, financial needs and daily routines; appears in compounds like 日常生活 (nichijō seikatsu), in economic contexts as 生活費 (seikatsu-hi) and as a verb phrase 生活する (seikatsu suru) meaning to live or make a living.
Variants and close terms
- 暮らし (kurashi) — everyday life, livelihood (more colloquial).
- 生活様式 (seikatsu yōshiki) — lifestyle, patterns of living (more formal/analytical).
- 生計 (seikei) — means of support, subsistence (focus on finances).
Composition
- 生 (sei / shō / いきる): life, birth, to live — denotes existence and living.
- 活 (katsu): active, lively, to be in use — implies activity and sustaining life.
- Together the characters convey the idea of living activity or the practical state of life, which yields the modern sense of daily life and livelihood.
Origin
The compound entered Japanese as a Sino-Japanese term with meanings close to its Chinese counterpart and became common in modern usage during the late Edo–Meiji periods as Japan adopted Western social concepts; it solidified in newspapers, government discourse and everyday speech as discussions of welfare, urbanization and modern routines increased.
Word class
noun (suru-verb, 名詞・サ変動詞)