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Definition of "subsist" [sub•sist]

  • To exist; be. (verb-intransitive)
  • To remain or continue in existence. (verb-intransitive)
  • To maintain life; live: subsisted on one meal a day. (verb-intransitive)
  • To be logically conceivable. (verb-intransitive)
  • To maintain or support with provisions. (verb-transitive)

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.

Use "subsist" in a sentence
  • "Sometimes a man will labour for weeks and months in unproductive ground, following up a small vein in the hope of its leading into a good lode, and making so little by his hard toil that on pay day of each month he is compelled to ask his employer for "subsist" -- or a small advance of money -- to enable him to live and go on with his work."
  • "The problem, I submit, is in using words like "subsist" which can mean different things to different people and whether these different meanings were intended by the drafters of the documents."
  • "As evinced by Vatican II's Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio, as well as other pertinent documents since that council closed, the Catholic Church has undergone and fostered the development of ecclesiological doctrine in such a way as to give an account of how the EOs and OOs relate to "the Church," which is said to "subsist" in the Roman communion as a perduring whole."