lose one's life

English

Verb

lose one's life (third-person singular simple present loses one's life, present participle losing one's life, simple past and past participle lost one's life)

1. (euphemistic) To die, especially to be killed during involvement in an activity or in some other undertaking.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:die

   • 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: […] Benj[amin] Motte, […], →OCLC, part I (A Voyage to Lilliput):

     The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us, there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one emperor lost his life.

   • 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC:

     I have no ambition to lose my life on the post-road between St. Petersburgh and Archangel.

   • 1893, William Butler Yeats, “The Friends of the People of Faery”, in The Celtic Twilight:

     “[H]is own wife lost her life with an accident that come to a horse that hadn't room to turn right with a harrow between the bush and the wall.”

   • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 2, in The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     “Do you think, Sir, that you could possibly send me on some mission for the paper? . . . anything that had adventure and danger in it. . . .” “You seem very anxious to lose your life.”

   • 2006 December 30, Unmesh Kher, “By the Numbers: The U.S. Death Toll”, in Time:

     [E]nemy fighters killed 2,320 of the troops who lost their lives in Iraq through December 2.

Translations

to die

• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 喪生／丧生 (song³ sang¹)

  Mandarin: 喪生／丧生 (zh) (sàngshēng)

• Finnish: menettää henkensä, heittää veivinsä (fi)
• French: perdre la vie (fr)
• German: ums Leben kommen (de), umkommen (de)
• Hungarian: életét veszti (hu)
• Italian: perdere la vita
• Polish: tracić życie impf, utracić życie pf
• Portuguese: perder a vida
• Russian: погиба́ть (ru) impf (pogibátʹ), поги́бнуть (ru) pf (pogíbnutʹ), расстава́ться с жи́знью impf (rasstavátʹsja s žíznʹju), расста́ться с жи́знью pf (rasstátʹsja s žíznʹju)

Further reading

• “lose one's life”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “lose your life”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “lose your life” (US) / “lose your life” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.