exist

English

Etymology

From French exister, from Latin existō, exsistō (“I am, I exist, appear, arise”), from ex (“out”) + sistere (“to set, place”) (related to stare (“to stand, to be stood”)), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *stísteh₂ti, from the root *steh₂- (“stand”); see stand. Compare assist, consist, desist, insist, persist, resist. Cognate with Spanish existir, French exister, Italian esistere, German existieren.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɛɡˈzɪst/, /ɪɡˈzɪst/

• Audio (GA)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪst

Verb

exist (third-person singular simple present exists, present participle existing, simple past and past participle existed)

1. (intransitive, stative) to be; have existence; have being or reality
   • 2012, The Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard: Version 6.1 – Core Specification, →ISBN, page 12:

     Various relationships may exist between character and glyph: […]

   • 2012, The Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard: Version 6.1 – Core Specification, →ISBN, page 19:

     […] , regardless of whether those characters also existed in other character encoding standards.

   • 2012, The Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard: Version 6.1 – Core Specification, →ISBN, page 55:

     […] , which will be treated either as an update of the existing character encoding or as a completely new character encoding.

   • 2021 June 30, Tim Dunn, “How we made... Secrets of the London Underground”, in RAIL, number 934, page 50:

     While you see some of our exploration on camera, I also spent many happy hours between shoots with Chris Nix, digging out dozens of wonderful plans, maps and drawings of projects that I never knew existed, and some that never did exist.

Conjugation

Synonyms

• be; See also Thesaurus:exist

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Further reading

• “exist”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “exist”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• exits, sixte

Romanian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key):

Verb

exist

1. first-person singular present indicative of exista: I exist
2. first-person singular present subjunctive of exista