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Is it grammatically correct to use the word life in the singular when referring to more than one person?

I found the following sentences in the Corpus of Contemporary American English.

a. we can save the life of many of these patients.

b. Clearly, CPR has been credited for saving the life of many.

k1eran
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GrammarBoy
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1 Answers1

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This is perfectly correct (ngram).

Examples

  • (ref., 2008) It reflects the priority of work in the life of many British contemporaries and, albeit indirectly, it invokes death through the implicit idea of stress resulting from a 'work-life' imbalance.

  • (ref., 1992) The life of many Christians today is largely a pretense.

  • (ref., 1975) In the monastic life, it is extremely important that we take account of this concept because, in fact, we have to face with sorrow the bitter truth that the life of many monks and many dedicated women, and many other dedicated people, […]

  • (ref., 2010) It was a model that ignored the realities of the life of many families, and was a model inaccessible to millions of poor families (Heiner, 2002).

However, "the lives of many" is not wrong and it is much more common (ref.).

LPH
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  • How about if I change "the life of many" to "many people's life" as in "The firefighters saved many people's life”? – GrammarBoy Oct 23 '20 at 19:15
  • @GrammarBoy It doesn't sound familiar to me; the unusualness of this agreement is verified in this ngram: books.google.com/ngrams/…; rather than that people had rather say "many people's lives"; however, you can still use the other way. As a matter of fact since a recent past more and more people have been doing so, as you can see in the ngram. – LPH Oct 23 '20 at 19:16
  • Sorry, LPH, I didn't realize you had answered my second question. I wanted to edit my comment but this system wouldn't allow me to do so. so I decided to delete my question and retype it. – GrammarBoy Oct 23 '20 at 19:23
  • @GrammarBoy No problem ! – LPH Oct 23 '20 at 19:28
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    There's a difference between these examples where life refers to a general, shared experience, and individual lives being saved. "Life" is often used to refer to a single, general style of living common among multiple people, in the singular ("The life of many Christians today is largely a pretense" cf "Life in America is largely a pretence"), but if you're talking about individual separate things, "lives" is better. – Stuart F Jul 09 '22 at 10:28
  • @StuartF I guess that by "talking about individual separate things" you mean life as "an individual person's existence insofar as that person is able to breathe, move, etc.". I couldn't assert even now that a plural is intrinsically better, nor that a plural is used consistently enough, but now that I am being made to reflect about this fact I tend to agree as far as the use of a plural being rather the norm. Bar one case ("Out of 164 infants boarded out they saved the life of 100 that would have died" - 1911) a singular noun is found for "they saved the life of" in Google Books. (1/2) – LPH Jul 09 '22 at 11:28
  • @StuartF There is the expression "for the life of them" that defies this usage, though. So, as far as usage goes, you are probably right, a plural is better. (2/2) – LPH Jul 09 '22 at 11:29
  • While I agree with StuartF's point that in all of the examples given here "life" refers to "way of life", I wouldn't concur that "lives" is necessarily the better choice when referring to an individual's being alive. There is a difference in emphasis between the singular and the plural: "This miracle drug will extend the life of millions of individuals around the world who suffer from _______." vs "This miracle drug will extend the lives of millions." – TimR Nov 01 '23 at 11:40