REAL LIFE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does real life mean? 

• REAL LIFE (noun)
  The noun REAL LIFE has 1 sense:

1. the practical world as opposed to the academic world

  Familiarity information: REAL LIFE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• REAL LIFE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The practical world as opposed to the academic world

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

real life; real world

Context example:

a good consultant must have a lot of experience in the real world

Hypernyms ("real life" is a kind of...):

reality; world (all of your experiences that determine how things appear to you)

 Context examples 

My dear chap, things don't happen like that in real life.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Testing the devices in situations that mimic real life settings but do not involve patients.

(Device Simulated Use Testing Evaluation Method, Food and Drug Administration)

The UGR researcher warns that it is necessary to differentiate between the study of lying in a laboratory and in real life.

(The most reliable scientific model to date for detecting when a person is lying, based on thermography, University of Granada)

In real life, thanks to observatories such as NASA's Kepler space telescope, we know that two-star systems can indeed support planets, although planets discovered so far around double-star systems are large and gaseous.

(Earth-Sized 'Tatooine' Planets Could Be Habitable, NASA)

You seem to be rubbing shoulders with large numbers of people, so you may be building a community online in social media or in real life.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

But, Lor' bless you, in real life a wolf is only a low creature, not half so clever or bold as a good dog; and not half a quarter so much fight in 'im. This one ain't been used to fightin' or even to providin' for hisself, and more like he's somewhere round the Park a-'idin' an' a-shiverin' of, and, if he thinks at all, wonderin' where he is to get his breakfast from; or maybe he's got down some area and is in a coal-cellar.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I took the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that the whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out with another man’s cheque for close upon a hundred pounds.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Not being a genius, like Keats, it won't kill me, she said stoutly, and I've got the joke on my side, after all, for the parts that were taken straight out of real life are denounced as impossible and absurd, and the scenes that I made up out of my own silly head are pronounced 'charmingly natural, tender, and true'.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)