A plural subject requires a plural object (lives), accordingly a singular subject requires a singular object (life). They can be used to mean one person or several people, however. So, if your intention is to refer to an individual who lost his or her life whilst saving the lives of more than one others, then the second is correct and the first incorrect. They is singular in this context, so ...
For sentence one: Look at it like this, 'He loves his life' and 'She loves her life' are obviously correct. Now, when we we say 'People love their _ .', we can mean two things: They love their own lives (separate lives) . They love the life that they are having together or share. Example: 'Software developers love their life' would mean that software developers love the life of software ...
I am so confused by, for example, "People love their life or lives."
Alternative to "impactful" when referring to work with meaningful effect on peoples' lives Ask Question Asked 13 years, 9 months ago Modified 11 years, 9 months ago
A few weeks back I wrote that Microsoft Azure Infra Summit 2026 was coming your way on May 19-21, 2026, and that we were building it for the people who actually keep the lights on, IT pros, platform engineers, SREs, and infrastructure teams.
Here are thousands of instances of "our life is short", and I seriously doubt many of them are specific to the lives of, say, a couple living together. It's perfectly normal to refer to human lives collectively in the singular.