life-giving

life-giving (comparative more life-giving, superlative most life-giving)

1. Necessary for life.

   We would have died without the unexpected rain that brought life-giving water.

   • 1989 April 15, Michael Ambrosino, “Acting Up In The Northwest”, in Gay Community News, page 16:

     The FDA has "blood on its hands" in its devastatingly slow release of potentially life-giving drugs to people surviving with AIDS and ARC.

   • 2000 June 17, Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Mary of Nazareth: Friend of God and Prophet”, in America‎^[1], volume 182, number 21:

     Her days were taken up with the life-giving, hard, unrecompensed work of women of all ages to feed, clothe and nurture her household.

2. Creating or engendering life; being a source of life.

life-giving (uncountable)

1. The act of giving life, of creating beings or fostering their survival.
   • 1988 December 11, John Kyper, “The 'Truth' Of Male-Dominated Social Science”, in Gay Community News, volume 16, number 22, page 8:

     The systematic, violent overthrow of an ethos of lifegiving by one that placed higher value on the taking of life culminated in the destruction of the Minoan civilization of Crete some four millenia ^[sic] later.

• life-giver