LIFELESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does lifeless mean? 

• LIFELESS (adjective)
  The adjective LIFELESS has 4 senses:

1. deprived of life; no longer living

2. destitute or having been emptied of life or living beings

3. lacking animation or excitement or activity

4. not having the capacity to support life

  Familiarity information: LIFELESS used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LIFELESS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Deprived of life; no longer living

Synonyms:

exanimate; lifeless

Context example:

a lifeless body

Similar:

dead (no longer having or seeming to have or expecting to have life)

Derivation:

lifelessness (not having life)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Destitute or having been emptied of life or living beings

Context example:

after the dance the littered and lifeless ballroom echoed hollowly

Similar:

empty (holding or containing nothing)

Derivation:

lifelessness (a state of no motion or movement)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Lacking animation or excitement or activity

Context example:

it was a lifeless party until she arrived

Similar:

unanimated (not animated or enlivened; dull)

Derivation:

lifelessness (not having life)

lifelessness (a state of no motion or movement)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Not having the capacity to support life

Context example:

a lifeless planet

Similar:

dead (not showing characteristics of life especially the capacity to sustain life; no longer exerting force or having energy or heat)

Derivation:

lifelessness (not having life)

 Context examples 

I tried to reach it, in a mad resolve to claw into the wood with my nails, but my arms were heavy and lifeless.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

A few country carts were stirring, bearing in vegetables to the metropolis, but the lines of villas on either side were as silent and lifeless as some city in a dream.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

When Earth was a lifeless planet about 4 billion years ago, chemical components came together in tiny molecular chains that would later evolve into proteins, which are crucial life building blocks.

(Pre-life building blocks spontaneously align in evolutionary experiment, National Science Foundation)

And when the great Ivan fell across his legs, hurled there lifeless and crushed by a down-rushing rock, he remembered the blind eyes of Old Kinoos and was glad.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

But she lay there limp and lifeless in the bloody, trampled snow, almost literally torn to pieces, the swart half-breed standing over her and cursing horribly.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

At the same instant the man stumbled forward upon his knees, and lay lifeless upon the deck, a blood-stained feather jutting out from his back.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But scarcely had she touched it, before the fairy’s prophecy was fulfilled; the spindle wounded her, and she fell down lifeless on the ground.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Kalahari, the name conjures an arid, almost lifeless expanse, its red, iron oxide sands stretching to the horizon and beyond.

(Sleeping sands of the Kalahari awaken after more than 10,000 years, NSF)