vita

vita, vitae is a first declension feminine noun, regular throughout: vita, vitae, vitae, vitam, vita, and plural vitae, vitarum, vitis. It comes from the same root as vivo, "to live".

It carries two senses that English also runs together: life as existence, the thing you can lose, and a life as a course of conduct or a biography. Suetonius's Vitae are Lives in the second sense. The set phrases are worth having ready: vitam agere or vitam degere, to spend one's life; de vita decedere, to depart from life, the polite way of saying "to die"; in vita, in the whole of one's experience. It comes down into Italian vita, Spanish vida and French vie.