live by

phrasal verb

lived by; living by; lives by

: to agree with and follow (something, such as a set of beliefs)

He tried to live by his faith.

a principle I try to live by

: to survive by (doing something)

They were an ancient people who lived by hunting and gathering.

Examples of live by in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Human beings treating each other right and living by the Golden Rule. —

Théoden Janes, Charlotte Observer, 15 Apr. 2024 Students memorize these Miles Ahead principles and are taught to live by them. —

Curtis Bunn, NBC News, 21 Mar. 2024 Not that Barrett’s characters get to enjoy any of it, living by their own law within the narrowest of spaces. —

Hazlitt, 20 Mar. 2024 In court records, federal investigators have used and cited open source video from the Capitol — much of it recorded and streamed live by people who took part in the incident — to find and identify those who participated. —

Salvador Hernandez, Los Angeles Times, 7 Mar. 2024 With Tchaikovsky’s beloved score performed live by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. —

The Enquirer, 7 Mar. 2024 History buffs can check out Zone of Interest, about a family living by Auschwitz, and Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, about the mysterious deaths in an Osage Indian family. —

TIME, 5 Mar. 2024 New users of Paramount+ can stream the game live by signing up for a seven-day trial. —

Reece Rogers, WIRED, 10 Feb. 2024 Yet, despite this, there are still Americans bucking the new conventional wisdom and living by ancient wisdom instead. —

Christian Schneider, National Review, 28 Mar. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'live by.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.