life form

or life-form


noun
  1. the form that is characteristic of a particular organism at maturity.

Origin of life form

1
First recorded in 1850–55

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use life form in a sentence

  • The summit of the stone pile was now covered with lizards of some type, apparently the local life-form.

    The Repairman | Harry Harrison
  • The systematic collections accumulated during his long life form one of the glories of the Kew Herbarium.

  • They have come here to take over these planets, and have started out with the first, natural moves of any invading life-form.

    The Last Evolution | John Wood Campbell
  • When you attack them, they merely say 'The life-form of Earth is sending out controlled machines.

    The Last Evolution | John Wood Campbell
  • Minutes later a life-form investigator came with a small cage, which held a guinea pig.

    The Last Evolution | John Wood Campbell

British Dictionary definitions for life form

life form

noun
  1. biology the characteristic overall form and structure of a mature organism on the basis of which it can be classified

  2. any living creature

  1. (in science fiction) an alien

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012