living death


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living death

n.
A situation or period of time characterized by unremitting pain and suffering.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

living death

n
a life or lengthy experience of constant misery
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

liv′ing death′


n.
a completely miserable, joyless existence, experience, situation, etc.; ordeal.
[1665–75]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun1.living death - a state of constant misery
miserableness, misery, wretchedness - a state of ill-being due to affliction or misfortune; "the misery and wretchedness of those slums is intolerable"
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
References in classic literature ?
Or, had he found that he had been too late, and thus gone back to a living death upon a dead world?
Is a foul and dark latrine, And the fetid breath of living Death
Were you tarred with the same brush as those canting snobs who doomed a poor old man to a living death? Doesn't it look like it?
So it was, when the doom of fifty years of living death was uttered by Judge Scott, that Jim Hall, hating all things in the society that misused him, rose up and raged in the court-room until dragged down by half a dozen of his blue-coated enemies.
The shark dropped back into the sea, helpless, yet with its full strength, doomed--to lingering starvation--a living death less meet for it than for the man who devised the punishment.
It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him.
Now Rokoff seized one of the paddles lying in the bottom of the craft, and, with terrorwide eyes still glued upon the living death that pursued him, struck out madly in an effort to augment the speed of the unwieldy canoe.
So once more I came back to my living death; too weak now to carry a finger to the salt water and back to my mouth; too weak to think of Eva; too weak to pray any longer for the end, to trouble or to care any more.
Having risen to its feet, this living death, in a sleepy voice and with a tongue hardly awake, held forth as follows:
Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not.
For more than two years he lived, but it was a living death. Without memory, without hope, the great genius had become the voiceless ruin of a man.
Run for the shelter!" But her paralyzed muscles refused to respond, and she stood mute and rigid, staring with ghastly countenance at the living death creeping toward them.