Meaning

A prisoner sentenced to life in prison..

Definitions by Sense

1. A prisoner sentenced to life in prison.
2. A prisoner sentenced to transportation for life.
3. A person with a singular career path, especially in the military.
4. A species seen for the first time by a birder or other naturalist who is keeping a list of all the species they have seen.

Example Sentences

They know what a clever lad he is; he'll be a lifer. They'll make the Artful nothing less than a lifer.

"[…]The Top's not a lifer; he's a career Marine. Lifers are a breed. A lifer is anybody who abuses authority he doesn't deserve to have. There are plenty of civilian lifers."

LRRP planned to become “career” Army, i.e., a lifer, you kept that quiet. Basic LRRP theology said the Army sucked and that philosophy kept one from going crazy because, at the bottom, nothing about the war seemed to make sense anyway. The LRRP's considered a lifer a loser. Being a lifer implied one had no other options available. Every LRRP had his own stories about back home: about family, friends, lovers, opportunities, dreams and a future. These were mostly fantasy, but […]

In the early years of EMS, the term lifer was an entitlement pinned to anyone who had worked the road for ten years or longer with no real plans of seeking a replacement trade. It was a term that was generally delivered in a respectful and lighthearted teasing manner by someone who by all definitions could have easily been described as a lifer himself—with the exception of one drawback. So far, the crews didn't know anyone who had worked in the field for ten years, much less longer […]

He was a baseball lifer, a seamhead through and through, who just absolutely liked nothing better than sitting down and talking baseball.

It is difficult to classify them precisely, but, in roughly ascending order of productivity, we now recognise the purely chance observer, the locality regulars (now recognising that ‘time in’ eventually equals ‘rarity out’), the ringers (particularly when working in groups), the occasional tally-hunter (most of us, if we are honest), the full-time observatory workers (exhibiting the highest standards of discipline) and the growing group of full-blooded rarity collectors (self-styled ‘twitchers’, covering individually up to 30,000 miles in their annual pursuit of ‘lifers’).

We have concurred that it was clearly Problema byssus, the byssus skipper: a lifer for me.

I saw six species of honeyeaters new to me and went home with 16 lifers and some bad sandfly bites.

Word Forms

• lifers

Synonyms for lifer

Related Words

When Should You Use Lifer?

Use lifer when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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