pseudolife

English

Alternative forms

• pseudo-life

Etymology

pseudo- +‎ life

Noun

pseudolife (countable and uncountable, plural pseudolives)

1. Something that has many of the characteristics of life but which is not life.
   • 1970, Peter Fingesten, The eclipse of symbolism, page 21:

     A carved slave in the grave of an Egyptian aristocrat was just stone, a painted basket of food was just a painting, until consecration endowed them with a pseudolife, a ghostly existence between this and the next life.

   • 1980, Frederik Pohl, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, page 202:

     He could remember anything, in that short life or in the long, long pseudolife that followed, provided only that he could remember where to look for it in his stored memories.

   • 1992, Ronald N. Giere, Cognitive Models of Science - Volume 15, page 465:

     To judge by this sample, wherever the discipline of philosophy of science has been touched by cognitive science the result has been a zombie — philosophy of science killed dead and brought back to ghoulish, mindless, pseudolife.

   • 1999, Richard Ham, Clinical Management of Stuttering in Older Children and Adults:

     Dolls, stuffed toys, and character dolls can be given pseudolife.

2. An inauthentic life; a life that lacks something necessary for being meaningful or worthwhile.
   • 1974, Willem L. Oltmans, On growth - Volume 1, page 86:

     Yes, it's a kind of suicide, this being committed to the pseudolife of mass organizations — daily suicide. Under the command of television you surrender your life to this or that organization.

   • 1983, Professor Ladislav Matejka, Benjamin A. Stolz, Cross Currents 1983: Yearbook of Central European Culture, page 15:

     In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the riverway of the pseudolife.

   • 1986, William Henry Schubert, Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility, page 358:

     What is more, parents and teachers perpetuate that pseudolife onto their children. The children devalue other aspects of their unique identity, and are treated as labels instead of fingerprints.

   • 1993, Samuel Slipp, Jules Bemporad, Curative Factors in Dynamic Psychotherapy, page 185:

     This patient was tom between living a pseudolife—by attempting to bury all self-awareness—and taking the risk of looking back and experiencing and sharing her memories, accumulated pain, hate, guilt, shame, and neediness for emotional support and sensual contact.

3. A false image of one's life.
   • 1974, Quality of Life: The later years, page 136:

     Such pseudolives leave one out of touch with one's self, one's feelings, one's desires, needs, and hopes. Illustrative may be the homosexual who has pretended to be otherwise, or the "family man" who has remained faithful but is depressed and miserable.

   • 2015, Ramani Durvasula, Should I Stay or Should I Go?:

     People live to be seen, sometimes even “faking life” in hopes that their “pseudolife” goes viral.

Anagrams

• pseudo-file, pseudofile