lifeless
Americanadjective
-
not endowed with life; having no life; inanimate.
lifeless matter.
- Synonyms:
- inorganic
- Antonyms:
- living
-
destitute of living things.
a lifeless planet.
-
deprived of life; dead.
a battlefield strewn with lifeless bodies.
- Synonyms:
- defunct
- Antonyms:
- living
-
without animation, liveliness, or spirit; dull; colorless; torpid.
a lifeless performance of a play.
- Synonyms:
- spiritless, sluggish, passive, inert, inactive
- Antonyms:
- lively
-
insensible, as a person who has fainted.
adjective
-
without life; inanimate; dead
-
not sustaining living organisms
-
having no vitality or animation
-
unconscious
Synonym Usage
See dead.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of lifeless
before 1000; Middle English lifles, Old English līflēas. See life, -less
Explanation
Someone who's lifeless has died. Your lifeless house plant probably got that way because you forgot to water it. You can use the adjective lifeless to describe once-living things, like people, animals, and plants, and you can also use it for objects that appear inert: "The creepy thing about that painting is the clown's lifeless eyes." Things that are duller or droopier than they should be are also lifeless, like your lifeless hair or a writer's lifeless prose. Less common is using lifeless to mean "with no living things," like the lifeless planet Venus.
Vocabulary lists containing lifeless
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Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher
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Empty
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The unpleasant market metaphor refers to the idea that even a lifeless feline when dropped from a height may initially ricochet off the ground.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 9, 2026
As Eggers jumps through time, we find Cricket working as an intern in an art gallery, an arid, lifeless space where nothing inspiring can possibly exist.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2026
Chwalinska was suffering from a depression that left her feeling lifeless and unable to get out of bed.
From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2026
Will it end in heat death, expanding into a frozen and lifeless expanse?
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 2026
He could sense the hall outside, as he always had sensed it; vacant and reverberating and lifeless.
From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
