survival
Pluralsurvivals (some meanings)
- 1The fact of continuing to live or exist, especially after danger, illness, or great difficulty.
The survival of the species depends on protecting its last remaining habitat.
Doctors gave the patient only a slim chance of survival after the operation.
Similarcontinuation, persistence
Oppositedeath, extinction, demise
- 2Of, relating to, or designed to aid staying alive, especially in dangerous or extreme conditions.
The expedition carried survival gear rated for arctic temperatures.
Wilderness guides teach survival techniques to first-time campers.
Note
Here the noun stands in front of another noun and does an adjective's work: survival kit, survival plan, survival gear. The meaning can also stretch from staying alive to simply getting by. Pat M. Kuras, writing in 1978, mentions her "survival job," the work that keeps her going between pinball and writing.
- 3The avoidance of being moved down to a lower league or division at the end of a season.
A late goal secured the club's survival and avoided the drop.
Survival was guaranteed once their nearest rivals lost on Saturday.
Oppositerelegation
Note
Sports writing borrows the life-or-death word for the league table, and the drama is deliberate. In Alan Stubbs's How Football Saved My Life (2013), a struggling season becomes "a battle for survival." The word is usually set against relegation or tied to the level being kept, as in top-flight survival. Dan Goldstein's Rough Guide to English Football twists a familiar saying into "snatching relegation from the jaws of top-flight survival."
- 4A custom or belief carried over from an earlier age and kept alive in folklore after the original reason for it has been forgotten.
Folklorists treat the midwinter bonfire as a survival from pre-Christian ritual.
The odd phrase in the nursery rhyme is a survival whose original meaning was lost centuries ago.
Similarrelic, vestige, holdover, remnant
Note
A technical term of Victorian anthropology, used by Edward Burnett Tylor in Primitive Culture (1871). It names a thing, so it takes an article and a plural. The usual frames are a survival of the original practice (another survival of marriage by capture) and a survival from the earlier period. Thomas Hardy carries it into fiction in Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) with "a gay survival from Old Style days."
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of survival apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
Formed from the verb "survive" combined with the suffix "-al".