Defn: n. [L. exinanitio.] An emptying; an enfeebling; exhaustion;
humiliation. [Obs.]
Fastings to the exinanition of spirits. Jer. Taylor.
EXIST Ex*ist", v. i. [imp. & p. p. Existed; p. pr. & vb. n. Existing.] Etym: [L. existere, exsistere, to step out or forth, emerge, appear, exist; ex out + sistere to cause to stand, to set, put, place, stand still, fr. stare to stand: cf. F. exister. See Stand.]
1. To be as a fact and not as a mode; to have an actual or real being, whether material or spiritual. Who now, alas! no more is missed Than if he never did exist. Swift. To conceive the world . . . to have existed from eternity. South.
2. To be manifest in any manner; to continue to be; as, great evils existed in his reign.
3. To live; to have life or the functions of vitality; as, men can not exist water, nor fishes on land.
Syn.
— See Be.
EXISTENCE
Ex*ist"ence, n. Etym: [Cf. F. existence.]
1. The state of existing or being; actual possession of being; continuance in being; as, the existence of body and of soul in union; the separate existence of the soul; immortal existence. The main object of our existence. Lubbock.
2. Continued or repeated manifestation; occurrence, as of events of any kind; as, the existence of a calamity or of a state of war. The existence therefore, of a phenomenon, is but another word for its being perceived, or for the inferred possibility of perceiving it. J. S. Mill.
3. That which exists; a being; a creature; an entity; as, living existences.