life cycle

life cycle

The term is first recorded in 1873 in its biological meaning ‘the series of changes in the life of an organism’, and this is the only meaning given in the current edition (2006) of the Concise Oxford Dictionary. During the course of the 20c, however, it developed extended meanings, and in the 1940s the anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote of the modern man:

• Here he is, only in middle age, and his life is over…no new fields to conquer…So while he is not out of a job…the very nature of the life-cycle in America is such that he feels like an old man —Male and Female, 1949.

The term is now found in the context of other human activities involving origin, development, change, and eventual decline and death, such as business and economics:

• In principle the task of the project manager is to plan, organize and lead a group of people to complete a project life cycle —S. A. Bergen, 1990

• As accountants, business advisers and financial consultants we provide a fully integrated service covering all assurance and advisory needs to the entrepreneur at every stage of the business life cycle —Birmingham Post, 2007.

This is a natural development of meaning when a cycle of events is involved, but care should be taken not to use the term in contexts in which the simple word life or another word such as process would do.