Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Exist

Exist , intransitive verb

[Latin existere, exsistere, to step out or forth, emerge, appear, exist; ex out + sistere to cause to stand, to set, put, place, stand still, from stare to stand: compare French 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 in water, nor fishes on land.