Sample Sentences for
existential
grouped by contextual meaning
(editor-reviewed)

existential as in:  existential threat

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Israel faces an existential threat from some of its neighbors.
existential = characterized by threatening existence
Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    The loss of the buffalo was an existential blow to the Apache culture.
    existential = relating to existence
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    McCandless wasn't some feckless slacker, adrift and confused, racked by existential despair.  (source)
    existential = related to searching for meaning in life
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    It could be some existential terror related to the trolls.  (source)
    existential = threatening existence
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Show 5 more with 2 word variations
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    The threat was not yet existential.  (source)
    existential = threatening existence
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    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
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    For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace.  (source)
    existential = threatening existence
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    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
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    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
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    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
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    "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
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Show 10 more with 5 word variations
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    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
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    Zayd (like most everyone in the three-hundred-seat lecture hall for Existentialism) thinks Reginster is about the coolest human being anywhere.†  (source)
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    Existentialist was another way of saying, "silly and out there."†  (source)
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    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)
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    I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws.  (source)
    existentially = concerned with meaning (or lack thereof) of life
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    We generally talk of twentieth-century existential philosophy.  (source)
    existential = relating to existentialism; a philosophical movement concerned with what is important in life
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    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
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    Our little existentialist in the making.†  (source)
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    GRANDMOTHER-JACQUES: Existentialists.†  (source)
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    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
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