1. Word finder
  2. Word definitions
  3. existence

Find the word definition

What is "existence"

Crossword clues for existence

existence
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
existence
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
deny the existence of sth
▪ The government has denied the existence of any political prisoners in the country.
God’s existence/the existence of God
▪ Philosophers argued about the existence of God.
God’s existence/the existence of God
▪ Philosophers argued about the existence of God.
humdrum existence/job/life etc
▪ the prisoners’ humdrum routine
lead...existence
▪ They lead a nomadic existence.
lonely life/existence
▪ He led a lonely life with few friends.
prove the existence of sth
▪ These pictures do not prove the existence of water on Mars.
the very existence of sth
▪ If the new project fails, it could threaten the very existence of the company.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
aware
▪ If you were not aware of its existence before, you will be now!
▪ The narrator can't be sure but guesses he wasn't even aware of the existence of the flowers.
▪ Geologists are aware of the existence of 2000 or more minerals with an amazing variety of properties.
▪ Sellers should be aware of their existence, for sometimes their effect can be devastating.
▪ The important point is that librarians may at least be aware of its existence.
▪ Maybe they are aware of our existence but don't want to reveal themselves to us.
▪ It is to be regretted that so few people in the county are aware of its existence.
continued
▪ The importance that the New Critics attribute to meaning and to vision necessitates the continued existence of the author.
▪ The issues raised are fundamental, casting doubt on the continued existence of member states in their present form.
▪ Which raised the problem of my own continued existence.
▪ Derek's father never recovered from this loss and refused to acknowledge the younger child's previous or continued existence.
▪ So the continued existence of the species, Man, remains in doubt.
▪ For Franco, the most problematical feature within the Nationalist zone was the continued existence of independent and competing political movements.
▪ They multiply this benefit by the likelihood that their personal contribution to the interest group will determine its success or continued existence.
human
▪ To human beings the existence of exploitative relations of production would be agonizing were they perceived simply as exploitative.
▪ It was so big and so full of edibles that I recognized it as the true cathedral to human existence.
▪ For the majority of human existence, therefore, only archaeological evidence can give clues about the past.
▪ For as we noted in the introduction, the job is not a timeless fact of human existence.
▪ Not so in the United States, where the very definition of human existence is the bread and butter of political debate.
▪ The three faiths all taught profoundly skeptical views of human existence.
▪ He would lie abed in the darkened dormitory, sensing a sloshing sea of human and mutant existence surrounding him.
▪ All of human existence was no more than a huge address book.
independent
▪ But the object of parenthood was just this, to fit your children for an independent existence.
▪ Moreover, we must not forget that the 895 phonetics identified by Soothill have an independent existence.
▪ It is said to be a luminous and dynamic nature capable of independent existence apart from its physical counterpart.
▪ A similar trend is also developing whereby parents sell their home when their children have established an independent existence.
▪ In the process of transmission the message does not have an independent existence.
▪ Congress once had an independent existence.
▪ It is not enough to say that the compiler has inserted a story that once had a quite independent existence.
mere
▪ For Oakeshott the authority of respublica does not arise from the mere existence of a rule of recognition.
▪ Whybrew, at 79, is still very much alive and feeling lucky, but for reasons richer than mere existence.
▪ Chopra had felt pain; the pain of mere existence.
▪ What these entities ultimately accomplish may be academic; but their mere existence should give doomsayers cause for hope.
▪ But it is clear that the mere existence of an alternative remedy does not oust judicial review.
▪ The mere existence of unsolved puzzles within a paradigm does not constitute a crisis.
▪ But the mere existence of such contacts did not mean very much.
very
▪ He also recognises that in a free society values may develop which are alien to its very existence.
▪ First, there is the obvious point that the very existence of private legislation procedure may not necessarily be recognised.
▪ Its birthday - its very existence - is being celebrated in a new book by Susan Basnett.
▪ The very existence of such a fund serves to emphasise the inequity of the present law.
▪ By its very existence it would start to replace the existing faiths.
▪ One would have thought that its very existence would be some sort of deterrent.
▪ So, for example, the very existence of a product range is, in itself, a selling point for a product.
■ VERB
acknowledge
▪ Yet when we are involved personally we are forced to acknowledge their existence and to try to understand them.
▪ Last September, seeking to strengthen his growing congregation and acknowledge its existence in the community at large, Rev.
▪ Weber acknowledged their existence but did not discuss them.
▪ Men who had recently found it difficult to acknowledge his existence now sought his advice.
▪ When he did acknowledge her existence he talked in dismissive and unrealistic terms.
▪ It was the only time that Father acknowledged the existence of spirits.
▪ He made it clear he could never acknowledge my existence to his family and I didn't expect him to.
▪ Dear Harsnet, he wrote, why do you persist in this rigmarole of refusing even to acknowledge my existence?
bring
▪ Zeus brings into existence and controls what he has created.
▪ It is brought into existence precisely to enable a specific purpose to be realised.
▪ Is the ultimate unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence?
▪ One has to bring into existence a latent power capable of doing this.
▪ What's more, you see, Jed's group is on the point of bringing Satan into corporeal existence.
▪ Unemployment has played a crucial role both in bringing the underclass into existence and to locking it in place.
come
▪ But another kind of question is how the complicated thing came into existence in the first place.
▪ Only when the very complicated structure of the brain exists will smells come into existence.
▪ Do, Aristotle asked, all the parts of the embryo come into existence together, or do they appear in succession?
▪ The work of Wordsworth came into existence at the same time as the growing desperation in the cotton mills.
▪ Gerry: It's really strange how the special interest groups of oppressed people came into existence.
▪ The universe just came into existence by chance, for no reason, and that is that.
▪ The words came into existence but not before he had analysed, accepted them, agreed to make them real.
▪ Since deregulation in 1979, dozens of airlines have gone out of business and dozens more have come into existence.
confirm
▪ The chief means of proactive enforcement is routine sampling, which will bring to light or confirm the existence of persistent pollutions.
▪ It was the medium through which he perceived his own soul, the formula through which he could confirm his own existence.
▪ In fieldwork, you are really looking for anything that might confirm the existence of a ley.
▪ Because Burns refused to discuss intelligence issues, he did not confirm or deny the existence of the intelligence report.
▪ Dozens of eyewitness accounts confirmed the existence of these discreet departures to destinations far from Kosovo.
▪ The developments remain top secret and no-one from the factory or the team would confirm or deny the existence of the kit.
▪ It is equally important that the practice of not confirming or denying the existence of a warrant is maintained consistently.
continue
▪ Similar advantages to the continued existence of other sorts of transposable element will probably turn up when people start looking in detail.
▪ Pastor Braun was periodically called to Berlin to justify the continued existence of the Institution and its inmates.
▪ I didn't see it as a choice between that and continuing an illegal existence.
▪ The infant can not continue its own existence without dependence on others.
▪ Acquiescence in the continued existence of these weapons is intolerable.
▪ Groups in other countries are known to have continued in existence for many years.
▪ Because I think the Net fundamentally undermines the continued existence of the nation-state, which is already past its economic usefulness.
▪ They note the continued existence of large numbers of low-paying, low-skill jobs.
deny
▪ Few would deny the existence of class differences.
▪ It is perhaps no wonder that young botanists and foresters deny its existence.
▪ No doubt this is the truth on which Hume relied in denying the existence of the Self as commonly conceived.
▪ The organization may simply deny the existence of these consequences or look on them as the inevitable costs of doing business.
▪ How can a child or young person immediately grieve for some one who denies their existence in that way?
▪ Because Burns refused to discuss intelligence issues, he did not confirm or deny the existence of the intelligence report.
▪ So the idea is that you have to pretend not to have periods, deny their existence.
▪ No universe is possible that denies the existence of that mind.
justify
▪ Tory Trotskyism wants to create the revolutionary conditions that will justify its existence.
▪ Pastor Braun was periodically called to Berlin to justify the continued existence of the Institution and its inmates.
▪ Since the cold war ended, many state intelligence agencies have struggled to justify their existence.
▪ Pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can....
▪ Is necessity the test that critics must meet to justify their existence?
▪ In ideas, our movement has been very productive, more than justifying its existence by this alone.
▪ We had to work hard to justify our existence.
▪ If its artists were consistently fresh and challenging, it would justify its existence easily.
lead
▪ Durkheim was a very austere man who led a rigidly timetabled existence and refused to talk to his family except at mealtimes.
▪ My several lives were often incompatible, and I led a schizophrenic existence.
▪ Before I got married I led a pretty lively existence where women were concerned, and enjoyed it to the full.
▪ Yet the whole history of evolution seems superbly well designed to lead to the existence of consciousness.
▪ By leading a solitary existence, he avoids competing with the females that he has fertilised.
▪ Thus he is forced to lead a clandestine existence, abandoned only when he occasionally reappears to demand money from his wife.
▪ However, in early days he seems to have led a sunny existence.
▪ For many years a companionate relationship may exist between two generations of adults in a family, each leading an independent existence.
live
▪ We live so isolated an existence here that to me it seems quite odd.
▪ George W.. Bush is living a charmed existence.
▪ The larvae live in kin groups and are aposematic, while the adults disperse to live a solitary existence and are cryptic.
▪ How could she go on living such an existence?
▪ He lived a very isolated existence and was something of a recluse.
▪ Ken, meanwhile, was living a more abstemious existence on stage.
▪ Therefore, in the bleak aftermath of war, he lived a hand-to-mouth existence in the less attractive areas of London.
owe
▪ It owes its existence to copper, which was discovered in the surrounding Mule Mountains in 1875.
▪ Yet in a very real way, we all owe our existence to the absence of choice available to our ancestors.
▪ The concession theory regards the company as owing its existence to an exercise of state power.
▪ I owe my existence to their absence of choice, as, almost certainly, does everyone reading this.
▪ A number of missions owe their existence to the initiative and financial support given in the first place by the Association.
▪ Some of the wildlife of the water-mill may owe its existence to a rather more conscious decision on the part of some long-dead miller.
▪ There are other conceptions of consciousness which also owe their existence to the pursuit of certain virtues.
prove
▪ So much for proving the existence of John Doe No. 2.
▪ Let him prove his existence to you.
▪ One does not need a council in order to prove the existence of well-established areas such as Lancashire or Somerset.
▪ This is an interesting theorem which seems to prove the existence of singularities for a large class of colliding plane waves.
▪ It was an exercise to prove the existence of a Nonconformist unity which only came into existence by the exercise.
▪ Evidence can thereby be admitted to prove or disprove the existence of the element which has been deemed jurisdictional.
▪ The perfection of life has often been used to prove the existence of a Creator.
threaten
▪ Deny or threaten it, and you deny and threaten some one's existence.
▪ Indeed, in the long term, provider networks may threaten the very existence of HMOs as they are now known.
▪ Wider reality would threaten their existence.
▪ In other words, failure on one new project could threaten the very existence of the company.
▪ The thought of our own guilt threatens our very existence.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
eke out a living/existence
▪ Cliff's family worked in the cotton fields to eke out a meager living.
▪ Again, the choice was between following the work to the factory towns or eking out an existence by labouring.
▪ Finally came the bookshop where dear Mr Sneddles tried to eke out a living.
▪ I was tired of eking out an existence near poverty level on my meager assistantship.
▪ Most of them eke out a living as subsistence farmers.
▪ Most people still live in the hinterlands of the inhabited islands eking out a living, but poverty abounds.
▪ She continued to eke out a living based on the fading memories of her famous plunge.
▪ The elderly eke out a living on pensions averaging from $ 50 to $ 75 monthly.
▪ The river banks were frequently lined with curious onlookers who struggle to eke out an existence in this harsh environment.
spring into existence/being
▪ Finally new businesses do not spring into existence simply because taxes are reduced in a given area.
▪ Here, a fast, sparkling fresh stream springs into existence, fords a lane and runs parallel to a wooden pathway.
▪ It may be possible to think of a universe springing into existence out of nothing at all.
▪ Louis, have sprung into being.
▪ The nurse's soft, slightly damp touch faded and darkness sprang into being inside Chesarynth's head.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Elena faced a lonely existence in the big city.
▪ For the first time she began to doubt the existence of God.
▪ The workers lived a miserable existence and were treated like serfs.
▪ Today there are less than 100 copies of the book still in existence.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Culture is derived as a historical force prior to the existence of any individual subject, but is only realizable through agency.
▪ It's not that my family deliberately kept Fred's existence a secret.
▪ It also exposes the fallacy of thinking that every possible world might come into existence sooner or later.
▪ It is probable that a maypole tradition had already been in existence for many years, if not centuries.
▪ It is the fastest, most effective way to build muscles in existence.
▪ One consequence of reflection is the existence of standing waves on the line.
▪ Sovereigns are born for an active life, and not for an idle or contemplative existence.
▪ The existence of such systems is less important than the fact that they are technically feasible and get reported as such.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Existence

Existence \Ex*ist"ence\, n. [Cf. F. existence.]

  1. The state of existing or being; actual possession of being; continuance in being; as, the existence of body and of soul in union; the separate existence of the soul; immortal existence.

    The main object of our existence.
    --Lubbock.

  2. Continued or repeated manifestation; occurrence, as of events of any kind; as, the existence of a calamity or of a state of war.

    The existence therefore, of a phenomenon, is but another word for its being perceived, or for the inferred possibility of perceiving it.
    --J. S. Mill.

  3. That which exists; a being; a creature; an entity; as, living existences.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
existence

late 14c., "reality," from Old French existence, from Medieval Latin existentia/exsistentia, from existentem/exsistentem (nominative existens/exsistens) "existent," present participle of Latin existere/exsistere "stand forth, come out, emerge; appear, be visible, come to light; arise, be produced; turn into," and, as a secondary meaning, "exist, be;" from ex- "forth" (see ex-) + sistere "cause to stand" (see assist).

Wiktionary
existence

n. The state of being, existing, or occurring; beinghood.

Related phrases:
WordNet
existence

  1. n. the state or fact of existing; "a point of view gradually coming into being"; "laws in existence for centuries" [syn: being, beingness] [ant: nonexistence, nonbeing]

  2. everything that exists anywhere; "they study the evolution of the universe"; "the biggest tree in existence" [syn: universe, creation, world, cosmos, macrocosm]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Existence

Existence is commonly held to be that which objectively persists independent of one's presence.

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, (for instance: "Does the stellar structure UDFj-39546284 exist?"), and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.

Materialism holds that the only things that exist are matter and energy, that all things are composed of material, that all actions require energy, and that all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions.

Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have self-sustaining biological processes from those that do notThe American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, via Answers.com:

  • "The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism."
  • "The characteristic state or condition of a living organism."—either because such functions have ceased ( death), or else because they lack such functions and are classified as "inanimate".

In mathematics, existence is asserted by a quantifier, the existential quantifier, one of two quantifiers (the other being the universal quantifier). The properties of the existential quantifier are established by axioms.

Existence (Dark Suns album)

Existence is the second album by the German progressive metal band, Dark Suns. For this release, the band dropped the harsh vocals that were used for the band's previous album Swanlike.

Existence (The X-Files)

"Existence" is the twenty-first episode and eighth season finale of the science fiction television series The X-Files and 182nd episode overall. The episode first premiered on Fox in the United States on May 20, 2001, and subsequently aired in the United Kingdom on June 28, 2001 on Sky1. It was written by executive producer Chris Carter and directed by Kim Manners. "Existence" earned a Nielsen household rating of 8.4 and was watched by 8.58 million households and 14 million viewers, overall. The episode received largely positive reviews from television critics.

The show centers on FBI special agents John Doggett ( Robert Patrick) and Dana Scully ( Gillian Anderson)—as well as ex-FBI agent Fox Mulder ( David Duchovny)—who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, continuing from the previous episode, " Essence", a new type of alien, called a Super Soldier programmed to destroy any traces of alien involvement on Earth, is introduced. Mulder, Doggett, Walter Skinner ( Mitch Pileggi), and Alex Krycek ( Nicholas Lea) help Scully escape from Billy Miles with Special Agent Monica Reyes ( Annabeth Gish) to a remote town. Shortly after, Skinner kills Krycek and Scully delivers an apparently normal baby with the alien Super Soldiers surrounding her. Without explanation, the aliens leave the area as Mulder arrives.

"Existence" is a story milestone for the series. It, along with previous season eight episodes starting with " Per Manum", helped to introduce the story arc featuring the super-soldiers which continued throughout the ninth season. The episode was the last to feature Fox Mulder's character until the series finale the following year. As such, the last scene with Doggett and Reyes in Kersh's office was intended to show the "New X-Files" without David Duchovny.

Existence (disambiguation)

Existence may also refer to:

  • Existence (Dark Suns album)
  • Existence (Beto Vázquez Infinity album)
  • "Existence" (The X-Files), a 2001 television episode
  • eXistenZ, a 1999 horror science-fiction film
  • The Existence, a 2004 EP release by Forever Changed
  • Existence, David Brin novel
  • The 14, a 1973 British film also released as Existence and The Wild Little Bunch
  • Existence, is the name of a music project founded by Margot Reisinger

Existential can mean "relating to existence" or "relating to existentialism". It is used in particular to refer to:

  • Existential quantification, in logic and mathematics (symbolized by ∃)
  • Existential clause, in linguistics
  • Existential crisis
  • Existential fallacy
  • Existential humanism
  • Existential forgery
  • Existential risk
  • Existential therapy
  • Existential graph
  • Existential phenomenology
Existence (Beto Vázquez Infinity album)

Existence is the fourth full-length album by Beto Vázquez Infinity, released on November 2010.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "existence".

Will pegged as physically being able to visit those other realms, he had a hard time accepting their existence and his ability to travel to them.

Why has the Primal not remained self-gathered so that there be none of this profusion of the manifold which we observe in existence and yet are compelled to trace to that absolute unity?

Untouched by multiplicity, it will be wholly self-sufficing, an absolute First, whereas any not-first demands its earlier, and any non-simplex needs the simplicities within itself as the very foundations of its composite existence.

I sometimes think this monotonous monotone of an actionless existence is more hell than I know what to do with.

Thus we are told that earth cannot have concrete existence without the help of some moist element--the moisture in water being the necessary adhesive--but admitting that we so find it, there is still a contradiction in pretending that any one element has a being of its own and in the same breath denying its self-coherence, making its subsistence depend upon others, and so, in reality, reducing the specific element to nothing.

The answer is that while Matter can not be any of the things which are founded upon it, it may quite well be something else, admitting that all existences are not rooted in Matter.

Now admitting the existence of a living thing that is at once a Thought and its object, it must be a Life distinct from the vegetative or sensitive life or any other life determined by Soul.

June, 1896, great stress was laid on the fact of the difference in the admixture of inks found on letters contemporaneous with the date of the will, and it was asserted also that the ink with which the will was written was not in existence at the time it was alleged to have been made, June 14, 1873, and probably not earlier than ten years later.

Lafayette-Constant wing of French liberalism by no means denies the existence of utilitarian themes in their advocacy of human rights.

Otto von Meissner, chief of the Presidential Chancellery, and Goering, who had accompanied Hitler, were the only witnesses to the conversation, and though Meissner is not a completely dependable source, his affidavit at Nuremberg is the only firsthand testimony in existence of what followed.

The Federal authorities, finally, are responsible for the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, whose existence on the statute books is a fatal bar to the treatment of the problem of corporate aggrandizement from the standpoint of genuinely national policy.

An old emeritus professor, Doctoran Hildegard, who was famed for his agnosticism, sipped his and announced that he now had evidence of the existence of the Deity.

Before this fire, the only crypt whose existence was known of, was a small chamber under the platform of the high altar, no wider than the central aisle of the choir, and only equal to a bay and a half of that aisle in length.

Gaean Reach and Alastor Cluster, especially those with rural populations, a new profession has come into existence: the man skilled in star-naming and star-lore.

Surely, with such tremendous power and influence, he might be the man to inform of the existence of Alata and so be discharged of his mission at last.