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

• (weak vowel distinction) IPA^(key): /ɪɡˈzɪst/, [ɪɡˈzɪst]

  • Audio (General American):

    (file)

• (weak vowel merger) IPA^(key): /əɡˈzɪst/, [əɡˈzɪst]
• Rhymes: -ɪst
• Hyphenation: ex‧ist

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) (săštestvuvam)
• 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 Greek: 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 boluw)
• Khmer: មាន (km) (mien)
• Korean: 존재(存在)하다 (ko) (jonjaehada)
• Kurdish:

  Northern Kurdish: hebûn (ku)

• 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
• Māori: 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), உள் (ta) (uḷ), 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 Eli Smith, editors (1895–1910), “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