survivor
Pluralsurvivors
- 1A person who remains alive after a dangerous or traumatic event that others did not live through.
The earthquake survivor described being trapped beneath rubble for two days.
Counselors worked with survivors to help them process the trauma.
Oppositefatality
Note
People often choose this word for themselves, and choose it against victim: calling yourself a survivor claims the experience rather than being defined by it. Pam Mitchell, writing in Gay Community News in 1984, uses it for a shared identity: "those of us who are survivors." In this use the event often goes unnamed, because the trauma is understood.
- 2A person with the resilience to endure repeated hardship and keep going despite serious setbacks.
Decades of setbacks never broke him; he remained a survivor to the very end.
The team called her a survivor for rebuilding the business after each collapse.
Similartrooper
Note
Here the word describes a temperament rather than an event. A survivor in this sense has come through many troubles and is expected to come through more. It usually follows a verb of being, as in "I'm a survivor," and works as praise or self-description. Trooper and tough cookie are close neighbors. Unlike the after-a-disaster meaning, no single catastrophe needs naming.
- 3A person connected to a particular deceased individual, typically a relative who outlived them.
The obituary listed her survivors, including two daughters and a brother.
As the closest survivor, he inherited the family home.
Note
The dead person is always in view in this use. Someone's survivors are survivors of them, so the word usually takes a possessive: her survivors, his survivors. Obituaries use it to list family, but it reaches beyond kin to anyone who knew the deceased. A funeral crowded with friends is crowded with survivors too. Nothing dangerous needs to have happened; outliving someone is enough.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from the verb survive combined with the suffix -or.