exist

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points: 12
Words With Friends: 12
Letters: 5

Pronunciation

/ɛɡˈzɪst/

See all 2 pronunciations

/ɛɡˈzɪst/ · /ɪɡˈzɪst/

Definition of exist

1 sense · 1 part of speech · etymology included

verb

(intransitive, stative)to be; have existence; have being or reality

“Cognitive dissonance exists when a person possesses two cognitions, one of which is contradictory to the other”
“Various relationships may exist between character and glyph: […]”
“[…], regardless of whether those characters also existed in other character encoding standards.”
“[…], which will be treated either as an update of the existing character encoding or as a completely new character encoding.”
“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.”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

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.