poet. and rhetorical. Forms: 5 lefe, leve longe, 6 leeue long, 6– livelong, 8–9 Sc. lee-lang. [Originally two words = LIEF a. and LONG a.; cf. the corresponding use in G. die liebe lange nacht (lit. ‘the dear long night’): see Grimm s.v. Lieb. In the latter part of the 16th c. the word was apprehended as if f. LIVE v. + LONG a., and altered in form in accordance with this view.]
1. An emotional intensive of long, used of periods of time. Chiefly in the livelong day, night.
c. 1400. Sowdone Bab., 832. Thus thai hurteled to-gedere Alle the lefe longe daye.
c. 1450. Lonelich, Grail, xxxix. 319. Al that leve longe Nyht Into the Se he loked forth Ryht.
c. 1575. Laneham, Lett. (1871), 61. Thus haue I told ye most of my trade, al the leeue long daye.
1597. Bp. Hall, Sat., III. vii. 65. He touch’t no meat of all this liue-long day.
1602. 2nd Pt. Return fr. Parnass., III. v. 1462. Where dreary owles do shrike the liue-long night.
1672. Marvell, Reh. Transp., I. 263. For though it seems so little a time … it hath been a whole live-long night.
1709. Steele, Tatler, No. 2, ¶ 2. Here I sit moping all the live-long Night.
1758. Johnson, Idler, No. 9, ¶ 4. Vacant of thought … I indulge the live-long day.
1786. Burns, Twa Dogs, 295. Or lee-lang nights, wi crabbit leuks, Pore owre the devil’s pictur’d beuks.
1787. Mad. D’Arblay, Diary, June. This was the last day of freedom for the whole livelong summer.
1806. J. Grahame, Birds Scot., 77. The live long summer day She at the house end sits.
1829. Hogg, Sheph. Cal., I. 25. He watched there the lee-lang night.
1847. Emerson, Poems, Good-bye, Wks. (Bohn), I. 416. Where arches green, the livelong day, Echo the blackbird’s roundelay.
1870. Bryant, Iliad, I. II. 35. It ill becomes a chief To sleep the livelong night.
¶ b. Used by Burns in transposed form.
179[?]. Burns, Mother’s Lament. So I, for my lost darling’s sake, Lament the live-day long.
2. nonce-use. That lives long or endures; lasting.
1630. Milton, On Shakespeare, 8. Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thy self a live-long monument.
¶ 3. Taken as = LIFELONG. (Prob. meant to be pronounced ləiv-.)
1882. Freeman, Reign Will. Rufus, II. vii. 453. He lived … to meet with a heavy doom, live-long bonds,… at the hands of his offended cousin and sovereign.
