the.com/life cycle

means The full sequence of stages a living thing (or a product, star, or idea) passes through from origin to end, often repeating in the next generation.

from A 19th-century coinage built from plain English 'life' and 'cycle,' the latter borrowed from Greek 'kyklos' meaning 'circle' or 'wheel.' Scientists first used it for the recurring stages of organisms — egg, larva, adult, and so on — then the phrase escaped the lab, so now products, stars, and even software have 'life cycles' too, each one borrowing biology's sense of an endless wheel turning back to its start.