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# lifeless

«lifeless» in Mova's judaism dictionary: **dead, or never having had life** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### part of speech

adjective (lifeless)

### meaning for a pupil

1) Lifeless means dead, or never having had life. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#m1)

2) Lifeless means with no living things, like a lifeless planet. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#m2)

3) Lifeless can mean dull, without energy or excitement. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

Interpretation: The Sefer Yetzirah commentary uses it to describe tohu, the empty waste before creation, which tradition sees as the raw state God shaped into an ordered world. In the primary lessons: In science: the Moon is lifeless; in stories: a lifeless body is a sad or scary detail; in English lessons: a lifeless voice or story is boring.

### examples

- Most literally, it means ‘waste(land)’, the lifeless open desert, a translation of [Genesis 1:2] so far captured in English only by Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible (2019), who poetically renders תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ tohu vavohu as “waste and welter”; cf. (Sefer Yetzirah, Sefaria community translation) [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#x1)
- The bird lay lifeless on the grass. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#x2)
- Mars seems to be a lifeless planet. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#x3)
- The desert looked lifeless, but many animals hid under the sand. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#x4)
- Her voice was flat and lifeless. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#x5)
- The doll's lifeless eyes stared at me. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#x6)
- Add more detail so your story isn't lifeless. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#x7)
- He sat lifeless on the steps. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/#x8)

### note

Made from «life» + «-less» (without). Opposite: lively, alive, full of life. No comparative is usually needed. It is gentler to say «not alive» to small children.

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «lifeless» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/judaism/L/lifeless/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.