lose one's life

lose one's life

1. (euphemistic) To die, especially to be killed during involvement in an activity or in some other undertaking.
   • 1726 October 28, [Jonathan Swift], chapter IV, in Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. […] [Gulliver’s Travels], volume I, London: Printed for Benj[amin] Motte, […], OCLC 995220039, part I (A Voyage to Lilliput):

     The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us, there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one emperor lost his life.

   • 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, Letter 1:

     I have no ambition to lose my life on the post-road between St. Petersburgh and Archangel.

   • 1893, William Butler Yeats, "The Friends of the People of Faery" in The Celtic Twilight:

     “[H]is own wife lost her life with an accident that come to a horse that hadn't room to turn right with a harrow between the bush and the wall.”

   • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World, ch. 2:

     “Do you think, Sir, that you could possibly send me on some mission for the paper? . . . anything that had adventure and danger in it. . . .”

     “You seem very anxious to lose your life.”

   • 2006 Dec. 30, Unmesh Kher, "By the Numbers: The U.S. Death Toll," Time:

     [E]nemy fighters killed 2,320 of the troops who lost their lives in Iraq through December 2.

• See Thesaurus:die

• “lose one's life” (US) / “lose one's life” (UK) in Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press.
• “lose one's life” in Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary.
• “lose-your-life” in the Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• “lose-your-life” (US) / “lose-your-life” (UK) in Macmillan Dictionary
• lose one's life at TheFreeDictionary