Where does “existence” come from?
Existence comes from Old French existentia, from Latin existentia (a noun formed with the suffix -ia from the Latin verb existere, meaning "to stand forth"), ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European eǵ-.
existence (English): The state of being, existing, or occurring;...
Definitions
- The state of being, existing, or occurring;...
Ancestry of “existence”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Old French | existence | — |
| 2 | Late Latin | existentia | existence |
| 3 | Latin | existens | Alternative form of exsistens |
| 4 | Latin | existere | present active infinitive of existō |
| 5 | Latin | existo | Alternative form of exsistō; to stand forth, come... |
| 6 | Latin | ex | A name of the letter "X"; out of, from |
| 7 | Latin | commūnicō | to impart, share |
| 8 | Latin | commūnis | common, commonplace, ordinary, general, universal, shared, shared alike, of both sides, belonging to two or more together |
| 9 | Old Latin | com(m)oinis | — |
| 10 | Proto-Italic | kommoinis | common |
| 11 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱom-moy-ni- | held in common |
| 12 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱóm | beside, near, by, with |
| 13 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱe | Deictic particle, here; Post-positional... |
| 14 | Middle English | kyt | — |
| 15 | Russian | кит | whale; genitive plural of ки́та |
| 16 | Old Church Slavonic | китъ | whale |
| 17 | Ancient Greek | κῆτος | whale, sea monster; abyss |