life-work

An artist's life-work is displayed in a grand museum gallery.

Definition

1. Noun:
   • The entire body of work or achievement of a person's lifetime: "life-work" refers to the complete set of tasks, projects, or accomplishments that define a person's career or creative output over their whole life.
   • A person's main or most important work: It can also mean the single greatest or most significant piece of work a person produces during their lifetime.

Usage Examples

• (The sum of her career achievements as a physician.)
• (His most important single accomplishment.)
• (The entire collection of his artistic output.)

Advanced Usage

• "to be one's life-work": to be the central or defining achievement of a person's career.

  • Writing that novel was her life-work; she spent thirty years on it. (The novel was her most defining and time-consuming project.)

• "to complete one's life-work": to finish the main project or body of work that defines a person's life.

  • Before he passed away, he managed to complete his life-work, an encyclopedia of local history. (He finished the major project of his lifetime.)

Variants and Related Words

• Life work (n, alternative spelling): often written as two separate words with the same meaning.

  • Teaching was his life work, and he influenced generations of students. (Same meaning as life-work.)

• Lifework (n, compound variant): a less common single-word spelling.

  • Her lifework in the field of archaeology is widely respected. (Her entire career's output.)

Synonyms

• Magnum opus: a great work, especially the most important work of an artist or writer.
• Life's work: the work that occupies a person's entire career or lifetime.
• Crowning achievement: the greatest or final accomplishment.

Related Idioms

• The work of a lifetime: an undertaking that lasts a whole life.

  • Building that cathedral was the work of a lifetime for the architect. (A project requiring decades of effort.)

• A labor of love: work done for personal satisfaction rather than for pay, often a life-work.

  • Restoring the old house was a labor of love, and it became his life-work. (A passionate, time-consuming project.)