Definition of "exist" []

• To have actual being; be real. (verb-intransitive)
• To have life; live: one of the worst actors that ever existed. (verb-intransitive)
• To live at a minimal level; subsist: barely enough income on which to exist. (verb-intransitive)
• To continue to be; persist: old customs that still exist in rural areas. (verb-intransitive)
• To be present under certain circumstances or in a specified place; occur: "Wealth and poverty exist in every demographic category” ( Thomas G. Exter). (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "And I again repeat solemnly Palacký's word that _Austria may exist only so long as her nations wish for it_, and that _she will cease to exist_ as soon as her nations do not want her to exist."
• "Evolution, seeking to be consistent, answers: "It is true that faculties cannot be evolved out of a thing unless they exist in a crude and undeveloped state in that thing, but these higher faculties _do exist_ in the lower orders, potentially, or in a germ form and are developed and become operative only in the higher forms of life.""
• "Form is superior to matter, because it needs the latter only to be seen but can exist by itself though not seen; whereas matter cannot _exist_ without form."