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 (General American):

  (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
   • 1977, Lawrence S. Wrightsman with Kay Deaux, Social Psychology, page 366:

     Cognitive dissonance exists when a person possesses two cognitions, one of which is contradictory to the other

   • 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

Conjugation of exist

infinitive	(to) exist
	present tense	past tense
1st-person singular	exist	existed
2nd-person singular	exist, existest†	existed, existedst†
3rd-person singular	exists, existeth†	existed
plural	exist
subjunctive	exist	existed
imperative	exist	—
participles	existing	existed

^† Archaic or obsolete.

Synonyms

• be; See also Thesaurus:exist

Derived terms

• coëxist
• coexist
• existability
• existable
• existible
• existless
• inexist
• postexist
• preexist
• superexist
• there exist
• unexist

Related terms

• existence
• existent
• existential

Translations

to be

Afrikaans: bestaan (af) Albanian: ekzistoj (sq) ,a (sq)(gheg) Arabic: وُجِدَ (ar) (wujida) Armenian: գոյություն ունենալ (goyutʻyun unenal), լինել (hy) (linel) Asturian: esistir, existir Azerbaijani: var olmaq, mövcüd olmaq Belarusian: існава́ць (be) (isnavácʹ) Bulgarian: съществувам (bg) (sǎštestvuvam) Catalan: existir (ca) Chinese: Cantonese: 存在 (cyun4 zoi6) Hokkien: 存在 (zh-min-nan) (chûn-chāi / chûn-chǎi) Mandarin: 存在 (zh) (cúnzài) Czech: být (cs), existovat (cs) Danish: eksistere (da), bestå (da), findes (da) Dutch: bestaan (nl) Egyptian: wnn Esperanto: ekzisti (eo) Estonian: eksisteerima, olemas olema, olelema Faroese: vera (fo), vera til, finnast Finnish: olla (fi), olla olemassa (fi) French: exister (fr) Galician: existir (gl) Georgian: არსებობა (arseboba) German: bestehen (de), existieren (de) Greek: υπάρχω (el) (ypárcho), υφίσταμαι (el) (yfístamai) Ancient: ὑπάρχω (hupárkhō) Hebrew: הִתְקַיֵּם (hitkayém) Hindi: अस्तित्व (hi) m (astitva) Hungarian: van (hu), létezik (hu), él (hu) Ido: existar (io) Interlingua: exister Irish: bí ann Italian: esistere (it) Japanese: 存在する (そんざいする, sonzai suru) Kazakh: бар болу (bar bolu) Khmer: មាន (km) (mien) Korean: 존재(存在)하다 (ko) (jonjaehada) Kyrgyz: бар болуу (bar boluu) Ladino: egzistir Latin: existō (la), exsistō (la), sum (la), exsto (la), consto (la), exto, compareo Latvian: eksistēt, pastāvēt Lithuanian: egzistuoti, būti (lt), gyvuoti Macedonian: егзисти́ра impf or pf (egzistíra), постои impf (postoi) Malay: wujud (ms) Maltese: eżista Maori: tiari, tiari Nahuatl: oncah, cah Norwegian: eksistere (no), bestå (no) Bokmål: finnes (no) Nynorsk: finnast (nn) Occitan: existir (oc) Old English: wesan (ang), bēon Persian: زیستن (fa) (zistan), وجود داشتن (fa) (vojud dâštan), هستادن Polish: istnieć (pl), egzystować (pl) Portuguese: existir (pt) Quechua: kay (qu) Romanian: exista (ro) Russian: существова́ть (ru) (suščestvovátʹ) Scots: exeest Serbo-Croatian: póstojati (sh), egzistírati (sh), òpstojati (sh), bȉvstvovati (sh) Slovak: jestvovať, existovať Slovene: obstajati (sl) impf Spanish: existir (es) Swedish: existera (sv), bestå (sv) Tajik: зистан (tg) (zistan), вуҷуд доштан (vujud doštan) Tamil: இரு (ta) (iru), (please verify) உளதா (uḷatā), (please verify) நிலவு (ta) (nilavu) Tangut: 𗁁 (*wjij²) Thai: มีอยู่ (mii-yùu) Turkish: var olmak (tr) Ukrainian: існува́ти (uk) (isnuváty) Uzbek: mavjud boʻlmoq, bor boʻlmoq Vietnamese: tồn tại (vi) (存在) Volapük: dabinön (vo) Walloon: egzister (wa) Welsh: bodoli (cy) Yiddish: עקסיסטירן (eksistirn) Zazaki: estin f, estey m

Further reading

• “exist”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “exist”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

Anagrams

• exits, sixte

Romanian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [eɡˈzist]

Verb

exist

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