# exist

Pronunciation: US say "eg-ZIST" /ɛɡˈzɪst/; UK say "ig-ZIST" /ɪɡˈzɪst/

## Verb

1. To be real; to have actual being or presence rather than only being imagined.
   - Simple: To be real or alive, or to be a thing in the world.
   - _Physicists still debate whether parallel universes truly exist._
   - _Many people insist that ghosts exist, even though no one has ever produced convincing proof._
2. To keep oneself alive with difficulty, typically on scarce money or food or under harsh conditions; often followed by on.
   - Simple: To just manage to stay alive, often with very little money or food.
   - _Thousands of families in the camp exist on food aid alone._
   - _During the long siege, the townspeople existed on whatever they could grow in their yards._

## Origin

English took it from French exister, whose source is Latin existō (exsistō) "I am, I exist, appear, arise." The Latin verb joins ex ("out") with sistere ("to set, place"), a relative of stare ("to stand"), and goes back in the end to the Proto-Indo-European root *steh₂- meaning "stand." Consist, insist, persist, and resist share the same Latin base.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/exist (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).