lifeblood

plural lifebloods · alternative life blood · alternative life's blood

1. uncountableusuallyBlood that is needed for continued life; blood regarded as the seat of life.

   Beowulf's body was wet with his life-blood: it came welling out.

   1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 85

   3 more examples

   [Y]ou desire his mana, yet you respect his tabu, for in you and him alike runs the common life-blood.

   1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., page 62

   You didn't come to me in time. And by the time you came to me that fool of a doctor had bled and leeched the lifeblood out of Timmy.

   circa 1980, George Spelvin, Petticoat Loose, Act II, Scene 1, published in George Spelvin's theatre book, volume 3

   It was she who stopped the lifeblood flow when Karl misswung an axe until Herta could come.

   2014, Andre Norton, Tales from High Hallack

2. figurativelyuncountableusuallyThat which is required for continued existence or function.

   Gasoline is the lifeblood of the modern city.

   5 more examples

   Information is the lifeblood of the United States and the world.

   1991, Winn Schwartau, Terminal Compromise

   The road brought invaders who left them hungry and dug up the dead. The road took living children away and made them dead to home. It was as if the roads were veins that bled off lifeblood but never pumped it back in.

   2006, James E. Kibler, Memory's Keep, page 55

   'We want to be able to market some of these small stations and the lifeblood lines where we currently have short trains in service.'

   2019 October, Tony Miles, Philip Sherratt, “EMR kicks off new era”, in Modern Railways, page 56

   Like most Victorian Railways, freight was the line's lifeblood.

   2020 May 20, Paul Bigland, “East London Line's renaissance”, in Rail, page 46

   The companies’ actions illustrate how online information — news stories, fictional works, message board posts, Wikipedia articles, computer programs, photos, podcasts and movie clips — has increasingly become the lifeblood of the booming A.I. industry.

   2024 April 6, Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson, Nico Grant, “How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 02 May 2024

   Synonyms: essence