livelong meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

livelong

adj

Etymology From Middle English live long, leve-long, lefe long (as in Alle the lefe longe daye), equivalent to lief + long. Compare Dutch heel den lieven langen dag (“all the livelong day”), German der liebe lange Tag (“the livelong day”) and German die liebe lange Nacht (“the livelong night”).

Total, complete, whole.

I've been working on the railroad, all the livelong day.
How dreary to be somebody! / How public, like a frog / To tell your name the livelong day / To an admiring bog!a. 1887 (date written), Emily Dickinson, “I'm Nobody! Who are you?”, in Mabel Loomis Todd and T[homas] W[entworth] Higginson, editors, Poems, Second Series, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, published 1891, page 21:

1 more example

[…] so they might spend the livelong day as befitteth high holiday, in pleasure and action without care, and thereafter revel in the lofty presence chamber till night grew old with eating and drinking and all delight.1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 7:

Obsolete Lasting; durable.

Thou, in our wonder and astonishment, Thou hast built thyself a live-long monument.1630, John Milton, On Shakespeare:

Related terms: lifelong

livelong

noun

Orpine (Hylotelephium telephium syn. Sedum telephium).