Where does “nonexistent” come from?
I need to work through this chain carefully, as it appears to have some errors or unusual elements that don't form a coherent etymological path.
The chain given is: English existent | Latin existens | Latin nonus | Latin ex | Latin ex | English nine | Latin novem | Proto-Indo-European new-
This doesn't form a logical sequence. "Nonexistent" would be a combination of "non-" (from Latin non, meaning "not") + "existent" (from Latin existens). The chain seems to conflate two separate etymological paths and includes anomalies like "English nine" appearing mid-chain in what should be a Latin-to-English progression.
Given the constraints and the unreliable chain provided, I should note that I cannot construct an accurate one-sentence etymology from this chain as presented, since it violates basic etymological logic (English words shouldn't appear in the middle of a Latin
nonexistent (English): Not existent; not real
Ancestry of “nonexistent”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|
| 1 | English | existent | existing; having life or being, current;... |
| 2 | Latin | existens | Alternative form of exsistens |
| 3 | Latin | existere | present active infinitive of existō |
| 4 | Latin | existo | Alternative form of exsistō; to stand forth, come... |
| 5 | Latin | ex | A name of the letter "X"; out of, from |
| 6 | Latin | commūnicō | — |
| 7 | Latin | commūnis | — |
| 8 | Old Latin | com(m)oinis | — |
| 9 | Proto-Italic | kommoinis | — |
| 10 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱom-moy-ni- | held in common |
| 11 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱóm | beside, near, by, with |
| 12 | Proto-Indo-European | ḱe | Deictic particle, here; Post-positional... |
| 13 | Middle English | kyt | — |
| 14 | German | kitt | — |
| 15 | Old High German | kuti | — |
| 16 | Proto-West Germanic | kwidu | gum, resin |
| 17 | Proto-Germanic | kweduz | resin |
Words derived from “nonexistent”