Meaning of thread of life | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A metaphor for a person’s lifespan, as generated by Clotho, measured out by Lachesis, and terminated by Atropos.
   Greek
2. DNA.
   poetic
3. The link of inheritance from past to present.
4. Destiny, fate.

Equivalents

Examples

“His book also tells of the intense competition between various research workers and groups during the years in which the secrets of "the spiral thread of life" were finally unravelled.”

“For this reason DNA has been termed the thread of life; the progressive elucidation of its structure and function have rightly been biology's central preoccupation since 1950.”

“The double helix is often described as a kind of gossamer thread of life, with genes arrayed along the thread, but in its natural habitat, the chromosome, the thread gets wrapped around pebbly little bits of protein called histone, so it's much more like small balls of twine, one after another, packed together in a bumpy amalgam.”

“DOWN the unimaginable corridors of geologic time the thread of life has passed from generation to generation, ever varying but unbroken.”

“The most important lesson of the full year course in ancient history was the inculcation of the sweep of time: that a nation's life was not lived in isolation from its neighbors, that the acts of men have great and grave influences on their own times and for the future, and that the thread of life beginning in ancient times extends to the present.”

“While some adoptive parents may tend to try and shy away of such discussions with their adopted children, it is very important for them to understand that a desire to connect to that thread of life that nonadoptees are granted is a natural instinct -- and should not be viewed as a threat to their family.”

“Argo, their thred of life is ſpun.”

“[…] he yearned more and more every moment, for love was stronger than he, and had seized his soul altogether, even when he was at the house of Aulus. The Parcae weave the thread of life for others; but love, yearning, and melancholy had woven it for him.”

“The problem of modern subjectivity may be elucidated by way of three images: the 'thread of life', the 'circle' and the 'core'. As for the first image, tradition will have it that the perfect development of individual life follows a continuous course from origin to end, […] this is the image of a more or less consistent theme unfolding throughout a life; historical time being the harmonizer. […] This is the idea of continuity, linking the origin (arche) and the goal (telos) of life, […] The postmodernist […] wants to replace it by the image of the severed thread, by the discontinuous and by the fragmentary which never reaches a final fulfilment.”

CEFR level