slice of life

English

Etymology

Calque of French tranche de vie.

Noun

slice of life (plural slices of life)

1. A work in a genre (of theater, cinema, literature, manga, etc.) that presents day-to-day happenings with no clear central plot and takes place in a world that mirrors our own.
2. An ordinary social occurrence or sequence of events.
   • 2003, Thomas C. O'Guinn, Chris T. Allen, Richard J. Semenik, Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion, page 201:

     […] in the culturally constituted world, but it needs advertising to link it to certain social representations, certain slices of life.

Translations

genre focused on day-to-day life

• Esperanto: tranĉaĵo de vivo, sekco de vivo
• French: tranche de vie (fr) f
• Japanese: 日常系 (にちじょうけい, nichijō-kei), スライス・オブ・ライフ (suraisu obu raifu)
• Polish: okruchy życia nvir
• Welsh: darn o fywyd m, talp o fywyd m

Further reading

• “a slice of life”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “a slice of life” (US) / “a slice of life” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
• “a slice of life”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “a slice of life” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.
• “a slice of life”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “slice of life”, in Collins English Dictionary.