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existential
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existential as in:  existential threat

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  • The loss of the buffalo was an existential blow to the Apache culture.
    existential = relating to existence
  • Buddha answered by likening the monk to a man who gets pierced by a poisoned arrow. The wounded man would have no theoretical interest in what the arrow was made of, what kind of poison it was dipped in, or which direction it came from.
    He would most likely want somebody to pull it out and treat the wound. ... That would be existentially important to him.   (source)
    existentially = characterized by threatening existence
  • For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking.   (source)
    existentially = in a manner that is related to what is important in life
  • McCandless wasn't some feckless slacker, adrift and confused, racked by existential despair.   (source)
    existential = related to searching for meaning in life
  • It could be some existential terror related to the trolls.   (source)
    existential = threatening existence
  • For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace.   (source)
  • The threat was not yet existential.   (source)
  • In 1977, while brooding on a Colorado barstool, picking unhappily at my existential scabs, I got it into my head to climb a mountain called the Devils Thumb.   (source)
    existential = related to searching for meaning or direction in life
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existential as in:  existential philosophy

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  • While she was enjoying life and making a better world, he fell into depression, suffering an existential crisis in which he came to think of life as pointless.
    existential = relating to knowing what is important in life
  • In the age of existentialism and thereafter, the story of lost children has been all the rage.   (source)
    existentialism = a philosophical movement that assumes each person is free to determine what is important in life
  • I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws.   (source)
    existentially = concerned with meaning (or lack thereof) of life
  • "You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself."
    His words were very enlightening to me. Later, after I thought about it a bit, I realized that it wasn't Buddhist philosophy at all, but was more akin to some modern physics theories.   (source)
    existential = relating to existence and what is important
  • He was a businessman, pronounced busynessman in his case, a hardworking, earthbound professional, more concerned with inbreeding among the lions than any over-arching moral or existential scheme.   (source)
    existential = relating to existentialism; a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • "Why were we here?"
    "You mean here at this camp, or are you being existential?"   (source)
    existential = relating to the philosophical question of what is important in life
  • When Marybeth asked How are you, it wasn't a courtesy, it was an existential question.   (source)
    existential = relating to how life is going relative to what is important in life
  • I am scared that nothing is real. That's called existential angst, or dread, and is as a rule only a stage on the way to new consciousness.   (source)
    existential = relating to existence and what is important
  • These sums in fact came back to me in the form of existential credit. I felt expansive, inclined to be sweepingly generous, and told the kids to pick out their Christmas gifts here and now.   (source)
    existential = seemingly important to existence
  • In those moments she did not have existential doubts.   (source)
    existential = relating to knowing what is important in life
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show 57 more with this conextual meaning
  • But somewhere between Wordsworth's nature poems and Kafka's existential short stories, I felt a need to study something tangible--something in the world of blood, bones, and cells.   (source)
    existential = relating to what is important in life
  • After yesterday's Waiting for Godot disaster, Ezra's next assignment had been for them to break up into groups and write their own existentialist plays.†   (source)
  • From the very first time he had undressed Amanda, fumbling his way in the darkness, tangled in the rags of her existentialist disguise, trembling with anticipation as he felt the protuberances and interstices that he had so often imagined without ever knowing them in all their splendid nakedness, he had assumed that she had sufficient experience to avoid making him a father at twenty-one and herself an unwed mother at twenty-five.†   (source)
  • Zayd (like most everyone in the three-hundred-seat lecture hall for Existentialism) thinks Reginster is about the coolest human being anywhere.†   (source)
  • Our little existentialist in the making.†   (source)
  • He was still wearing his characteristic word shirts—this one said EXISTENTIALISTS DO IT POINTLESSLY-but his jeans no longer had holes in the knees and torn pockets.†   (source)
  • One game appeared to be charades reinterpreted by existentialists; another involved listening to rocks.†   (source)
  • Existentialist even.†   (source)
  • But there you were, believing in nothing, grabbing whatever little kick came along, exactly like the rest—an 'existentialist,' as my mother calls herself.†   (source)
  • GRANDMOTHER-JACQUES: Existentialists.†   (source)
  • She was also an existential philosopher.   (source)
    existential = relating to existentialism; a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • "This is not a natural catastrophe."
    "No, it is an existential catastrophe."   (source)
    existential = relating to the philosophy of existence and what is important
  • We generally talk of twentieth-century existential philosophy.   (source)
    existential = relating to existentialism; a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • Both Kierkegaard and some of this century's existential philosophers were Christian.   (source)
  • Existentialism, inspired by the Danish philosopher, flourished widely in the twentieth century.   (source)
    existentialism = a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • But Sartre's allegiance was to what we might call an atheistic existentialism.   (source)
  • You mean the history of philosophy stops with Sartre and existentialism?   (source)
  • You were going to talk about existentialism.   (source)
  • Simone de Beauvoir attempted to apply existentialism to feminism.   (source)
  • Existentialist philosophy has had radical significance for many people all over the world.   (source)
    existentialist = concerned with what is important
  • His existentialism became especially popular in the forties, just after the war.   (source)
    existentialism = a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • Because Kierkegaard became an existentialist and Marx became a materialist?   (source)
    existentialist = relating to existentialism; a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • He was the leading light among the existentialists—at least, to the broader public.   (source)
    existentialists = philosophers concerned with what is important
  • Hilde had been especially taken with what Alberto said about Sartre and existentialism.   (source)
    existentialism = a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • By that he meant that the existentialists start from nothing but humanity itself.   (source)
    existentialists = philosophers concerned with what is important
  • Sartre said that 'existentialism is humanism.'   (source)
    existentialism = deciding what is important in life
  • Therefore it is existentially important to you.   (source)
    existentially = relating to what is important in life
  • Or was there something that was existentially important to them?   (source)
  • It got really angsty, a real existential crisis.   (source)
    existential = relating to knowing what is important
  • He was a veritable existential identity crisis, a male stripper with more aliases than a covert CIA agent.   (source)
    existential = relating to essential self-image
  • Abraham Maslow, I present to you Augustus Waters, whose existential curiosity dwarfed that of his well-fed, well-loved, healthy brethren.   (source)
    existential = relating to existentialism; a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • The cave may bring on or point up a variety of inauthentic experience (another existential concept)—that is, Adela is confronted by the hypocrisy of her life and her reasons for coming to India or agreeing to marry Ronnie, her fiance, by her failure to take responsibility for her own existence.   (source)
    existential = relating to what is important in life
  • The day of the existentially fraught free throws was coincidentally also my last day of dual leggedness.   (source)
    existentially = concerned with meaning (or lack thereof) of life
  • Perhaps what she meets in the cave is instead Nothingness, albeit some years before Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and the existentialists of the 1950s and 1960s articulate the dichotomy between, in Sartre's terms, Being and Nothingness.   (source)
    existentialists = related to existentialism -- a philosophical movement concerned with existence and what is important in a godless world
  • In examining how a person confronts the wholesale devastation wrought by disease, Camus can set his existentialist philosophy into motion in a fictional setting: the isolation and uncertainty caused by the disease, the absurdly random nature of infection, the despair felt by a doctor in the face of an unstoppable epidemic, the desire to act even while recognizing the pointlessness of action.   (source)
  • There was this tunnel that these two kids kept crawling through over and over and they never seemed to get tired, which made me think of Augustus Waters and the existentially fraught free throws.   (source)
    existentially = concerned with meaning (or lack thereof) of life
  • I was beginning to think that I was the subject of some existentialist experiment in permanently delayed gratification when Dr. Maria showed up on Friday morning, sniffed around me for a minute, and told me I was good to go.   (source)
    existentialist = of existentialism -- a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • You may recall that angst, a sense of dread, was also characteristic of Kierkegaard's description of a person in an existential situation.   (source)
    existential = relating to knowing what is important
  • This is a collective term for several philosophical currents that take man's existential situation as their point of departure.   (source)
    existential = relating to existence and what is important
  • This means nothing less than that everybody has an innate need to give artistic expression to his or her existential situation.   (source)
    existential = relating to existentialism; a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • So we have looked at what Kierkegaard meant by 'existential,' what he meant by 'subjective truth,' and what his concept of 'faith' was.   (source)
    existential = relating to what is important in life
  • Instead of great speculative systems, we had what we call an existential philosophy or a philosophy of action.   (source)
    existential = relating to existentialism -- a philosophical movement that assumes each person is free to determine what is essential in their existence
  • A man who was influenced by both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche was the German existential philosopher Martin Heidegger.   (source)
    existential = relating to existentialism; a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • It is an expression of the fact that the individual is in an 'existential situation,' and can now elect to make the great leap to a higher stage.   (source)
  • Sartre made an important observation when he said that existential questions cannot be answered once and for all.   (source)
    existential = relating to what is important in life
  • Several of these existential philosophers, or existentialists, based their ideas not only on Kierkegaard, but on Hegel and Marx as well.   (source)
    existential = relating to existentialism; a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • Another masterly description of how existential choice springs from inner need and despair can be found in Dostoyevsky's great novel Crime and Punishment.   (source)
    existential = relating to what is important in life
  • Unlike the Romantics, Socrates was what Kierkegaard called an 'existential' thinker. That is to say, a thinker who draws his entire existence into his philosophical reflection.   (source)
    existential = relating to existence and what is important
  • Several of these existential philosophers, or existentialists, based their ideas not only on Kierkegaard, but on Hegel and Marx as well.   (source)
    existentialists = concerned with what is important
  • Existentialism also had a great influence on literature, from the forties to the present day, especially on drama.   (source)
    existentialism = a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • But we are going to concentrate on the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, who lived from 1905 to 1980.   (source)
    existentialist = philosopher concerned with what is important
  • Lots … movements are going off in all directions We'll start with one very important direction, and that is existentialism.   (source)
    existentialism = a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
  • And if we can manage a few closing comments on Sartre and Existentialism, our plan can be put into operation.   (source)
  • Each morning when I walk through the house on the way to make coffee, I turn on the music, hit the "shuffle" button, and it's Dance Time! I dance alone to whatever is playing. It's a form of existential aerobics, a moving meditation.   (source)
    existential = relating to what is important in life
  • And Ben Parish slammed his open hand onto the frozen ground, arching his back and yelling incoherently, and I'm thinking, Oh God, oh God, not the time for an existential crisis.   (source)
    existential = relating to knowing what is important in life
  • Existentialist was another way of saying, "silly and out there."†   (source)
  • Nicolas showed up with the lovely Amanda, who had just discovered Sartre and had adopted the dire look of the European existentialists, dressed all in black, pale-faced, her Arab eyes lined with kohl, her dark hair hanging to her waist, and a jangle of bracelets, necklaces, and earrings that caused a stir wherever she went.†   (source)
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  • Some of my students created completely unlikely existential worlds populated by lovable 3-D creatures they first dreamed about as kids.†   (source)
  • I pantomime excellent health, existential angst, regret, and an enormous sense of loss, all via a single nod.†   (source)
  • It's a juicy existential dilemma.†   (source)
  • And I'm feeling very existential tonight.†   (source)
  • Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?†   (source)
  • It was the proudest moment in the history of the school, endlessly appreciated and extolled as the definitive existential moment in its past.†   (source)
  • No, it was later, I realized, during one moment of what seemed now their unending conflict, that his voice had come down through the ceiling, booming, with the ponderous, measured cadence of booted footfalls, and cried out in a tone that might have been deemed a parody of existential anguish had it not possessed the resonances of complete, unfeigned terror: "Don't ...you ...see ...Sophie ...we ...are ...dying!†   (source)
  • Existential or nihilist ones.†   (source)
  • The existential burn.†   (source)
  • They sat there and waited for Lenny, the jazz musicians emitting a faint reek of weed, a few monosyllabic chicks in existential black, the clean-cut college boys with secret deviant tastes, the entire staff of a little magazine called Polyester Wok, five righteous souls whose anger at the world was being undermined by the events of the past few days.†   (source)
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  • In fact, high school is where we are first introduced to the basic existential question of life: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad?†   (source)
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