living death

living death (usually uncountable, plural living deaths)

1. (idiomatic) A condition of suffering, solitude, or impairment so extreme as to deprive one's existence of all happiness and meaning.
   • c. 1593, William Shakespeare, Richard III, act 1, sc. 2:

     Lady Anne: Never hung poison on a fouler toad.

     Out of my sight! thou dost infect my eyes.

     Gloucester: Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.

     Lady Anne: Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead!

     Gloucester: I would they were, that I might die at once;

     For now they kill me with a living death.

   • 1860, George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, ch. 6:

     Mr. Tulliver, who had begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this living death throughout the critical hours.

   • 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Refugees, ch. 23:

     If their creed were no longer tolerated, then, and if they remained true to it, they must either fly from the country or spend a living death tugging at an oar or working in a chain-gang upon the roads.

   • 1904, E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Master Mummer, ch. 9:

     "[W]e cling so closely here to our own doctrine of isolation. . . ."

     "Isobel is intended, then?" I asked.

     "For the Church," Madame Richard answered. . . .

     "Madame," I answered, "Isobel is meant for life—not a living death."

   • 2004 Nov. 7, John Schwartz and James Estrin, "Living for Today, Locked in a Paralyzed Body," New York Times (retrieved 12 June 2014):

     A.L.S., or Lou Gehrig's disease, is often described as a kind of living death in which the body goes flaccid while the mind remains intact and acutely aware.

• agony
• desolation
• misery

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