the.com/life span
The one deadline nobody negotiates, extends, or gets back.
means The total length of time a living thing exists, from birth to death.
from A straightforward compound: 'life' plus 'span,' the old word for the distance a hand's fingers can stretch when spread out. Span comes from Old English spann, rooted in a Germanic word for stretching or extending — the same root gives us 'spin.' Applied to time, a span became any stretched-out length of duration, so a lifespan is literally life measured as a distance you stretch across, end to end.
- biggest lever
- birth year matters less than birth zip code
- cap theory
- humans may plateau near 120, no exceptions yet
- sneaky factor
- loneliness shortens it like smoking does
- compound interest
- sleep and stairs add years, pills mostly don't