life cycle

Definitions

1. The course of stages through which an organism passes from fertilized zygote until maturity, reproduction, and death.
2. The useful life of a product or system; the developmental history of an individual or group in society.
   broadly

Equivalents

Examples

“Plants’ life cycles are an attractive subject of study⟳ for citizen science because they are relatively easy to discern. In fact, the name⟳ for the field in which we work⟳, phenology, literally means “the science of appearance.” The word was coined just a few years after Thoreau made his phenological observations, from the Greek phaino (to show⟳ or appear⟳) and logos (to study⟳).”

“Since it began operating in 1950, Sellafield has had different duties. First it manufactured plutonium for nuclear weapons. Then it generated electricity for the National Grid, until 2003. It also carried out years of fuel reprocessing: extracting uranium and plutonium from nuclear fuel rods after they’d ended their life cycles.”

CEFR level