How to Use life-and-death in a Sentence

life-and-death

adjective
  • Certainly not the life-and-death stakes.
    — Brian Truitt, USA Today, 20 Mar. 2026
  • The life-and-death drama played out in the heart of country music.
    — Keith Sharon, USA TODAY, 2 Sep. 2024
  • That's a life-and-death situation right there.
    — Christine Sloan, CBS News, 27 Feb. 2026
  • The stakes of slow action on pedestrian and cyclist safety are life-and-death.
    — Ariane Lange, Sacbee.com, 16 Mar. 2026
  • William eventually makes his way to the church to ask Jamie for help on a life-and-death matter.
    — Lincee Ray, EW.com, 18 Jan. 2025
  • On vaccines, Democrats said Kennedy was flip-flopping on a life-and-death issue.
    — Alexandra Hutzler, ABC News, 29 Jan. 2025
  • Three days later, in a second life-and-death crisis, the pope suffered a pair of acute bronchiospasms episodes.
    — Colleen Barry, Chicago Tribune, 25 Mar. 2025
  • Between the frigid cold and circling wolves below, the trio make life-and-death decisions to survive.
    — Keith Langston, Peoplemag, 24 Nov. 2023
  • Taveras said the bill has life-and-death consequences for children and drivers involved in school bus crashes.
    — Thomas Goodwin Smith, Baltimore Sun, 14 Feb. 2024
  • For the final few episodes of the series, Eleven has been reckoning with a life-and-death dilemma.
    — Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 31 Dec. 2025
  • These include sustaining a crucial vow of silence plus life-and-death trials by fire and water.
    — Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, 9 Mar. 2023
  • Many of the commenters were tickled by the cat facing a life-and-death situation and coming away bored.
    — Mark Price, Charlotte Observer, 31 Dec. 2025
  • Drug discovery — that, of course, is very important, with life-and-death consequences.
    — Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 7 Nov. 2024
  • The dialogue is mostly terse; each sentence bears the weight of life-and-death implications.
    — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 5 Feb. 2025
  • Unaware of the life-and-death drama unfolding just feet from them, his parents were relaxing upstairs on the couch.
    — Michael Collins, USA TODAY, 12 June 2023
  • But in a war, deepfakes can be used to sow confusion with potentially life-and-death consequences.
    — Vivienne Walt, Fortune, 4 Dec. 2023
  • Any profession with life-and-death authority must be willing to confront its worst failures, not hide them.
    — Dave Myers, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 Jan. 2026
  • And that is all before meaningful debt repayment, which will become a matter of life-and-death for the company.
    — Joseph M. Singer, HollywoodReporter, 22 May 2026
  • Energy reliability is a life-and-death issue in the heat of the summer.
    — Russ Wiles, The Arizona Republic, 9 July 2024
  • As time starts running out, emotions intensify, resulting in a love triangle with life-and-death stakes.
    — Matt Grobar, Deadline, 19 Nov. 2024
  • Then, the staff got to work picking the ones that best encapsulated the uncertainty and life-and-death feelings of that moment.
    — Erik Ortiz, NBC News, 30 Aug. 2023
  • There, Slayton–speaking in quiet tones—laid down what was NASA’s life-and-death law.
    — Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 11 Nov. 2025
  • The clashing of swords against one another adds suspense as beloved or infamous characters engage in life-and-death battles on screen.
    — Marina Johnson, Detroit Free Press, 3 May 2023
  • Relying on massive solar power systems for this life-and-death project could doom the entire endeavor, Zubrin tells me.
    — Kevin Holden Platt, Forbes, 11 Mar. 2025
  • Advertisement These are not good odds, especially for something as life-and-death in scope as a pandemic.
    — Dr. Seth Berkley, Time, 26 Sep. 2025
  • Healthcare workers and anyone in any industry that deals with life-and-death situations have higher stressors in their daily jobs.
    — Hanna Kang, Orange County Register, 20 Jan. 2024
  • Playing a child’s game and managing life-and-death Middle East politics share very little in common.
    — Los Angeles Times, 4 May 2026
  • Quick life-and-death decisions sometimes must be made based on incomplete data, and current gen AI models are still too opaque.
    — Frank Bajak, Fortune, 23 May 2024
  • Scientists have also suspected that those species’ role is so important that their loss could have life-and-death consequences for human beings.
    — Dylan Scott, Vox, 2 Aug. 2024
  • And yet the bad boy has long been a trope of popular culture, particularly in a genre when the differences between bad and good are heightened to life-and-death stakes.
    — Eliana Dockterman, TIME, 3 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'life-and-death.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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