Search the Dictionary

Subsequent existence.

Existing or living after. [R.] "Postexistent atoms." Cudworth.

To exist previously; to exist before something else.

Existence in a former state, or previous to something else. Wisdom declares her antiquity and preëxistence to all the works of this earth. T. Burnet.

Preëxistence. [Obs.]

Existing previously; preceding existence; as, a preëxistent state. Pope.

The theory of a preëxistence of souls before their association with human bodies. Emerson.

Previous esteem or estimation. [Obs.] Sir T. Browne.

Inherent existence; existence possessed by virtue of a being's own nature, and independent of any other being or cause; -- an attribute peculiar to God. Blackmore.

Existing of or by himself,independent of any other being or cause; -- as, God is the only self-existent being.

Not existing; lacking; as, the part was rudimental or absent.

Loosed from, or unconnected by, dependence on any other being; self-existent; self-sufficing.

stract ideas, as beauty, whiteness, roundness, without regarding any object in which they exist; or abstract terms are the names of orders, genera or species of things, in which there is a combination of similar qualities. -- Abstract numbers (Math.), numbers used without application to things, as 6, 8, 10; but when a…

, the act is called abstraction. So, also, when it considers whiteness, softness, virtue, existence, as separate from any particular objects.

To sour; to imbitter. His thin existence all acidified into rage. Carlyle.

wning or recognized in a particular character or relationship; recognition as regards the existence, authority, truth, or genuineness. Immediately upon the acknowledgment of the Christian faith, the eunuch was baptized by Philip. Hooker.

A denial of the existence of the universe as distinct from God.

One who denies the existence of the universe, or of a universe as distinct from God. G. H. Lewes.

The lowest group of Vertebrata, including the amphioxus, in which no skull exists.

A state of reality or real existence as opposed to a possibility or possible existence. [Obs.] The seeds of plants are not at first in act, but in possibility, what they afterward grow to be. Hooker.