living death

plural living deaths

1. idiomaticuncountableusuallyA condition of suffering, solitude, or impairment so extreme as to deprive one's existence of all happiness and meaning.

   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.

   2004 November 7, John Schwartz, James Estrin, “Living for Today, Locked in a Paralyzed Body”, in New York Times, retrieved 12 Jun 2014

   4 more examples

   La[dy Anne]. Neuer hung poiſon on a fouler toade, Out of my ſight thou doeſt infect my eies. Glo[ucester]. Thine eies ſweete Lady haue infected mine. La[dy Anne]. Would they were baſiliſkes to ſtrike thee dead. Glo[ucester]. I would they were that I might die at once, For now they kill me with a liuing death: […]

   c. 1593 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Valentine Sims [and Peter Short] for Andrew Wise, […], published 1597, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], signature B2, recto

   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 when the noise of the sale came nearest to his chamber.

   1860, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-knife”, in The Mill on the Floss […], volume II, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book III (The Downfall), page 82

   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.

   1893, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Fall of the Catinats”, in The Refugees: A Tale of Two Continents, volume II, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, [part I (In the Old World)], page 188

   "[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."

   1904, E. Phillips Oppenheim, chapter 9, in The Master Mummer