Eh, you're quibbling with words. We're getting closer to the quantum (indivisible) definition of life, and that's understanding.

I don't think that they are. The term life, as it's currently defined, is not very useful. The reality is that there is a very colorful spectrum of microscopic biology and that a single bin of "alive" and "not alive" is like trying to paint the mona lisa with a single pixel.

This scishow video gives a good look at the tip of the iceberg.

https://youtu.be/FXqmzKwBB_w

As they said in another comment, life is the ability to decrease entropy. That definition would tie in quantum mechanics.