Word.ws English Dictionary

existing

/ɪɡˈzɪstɪŋ/

existing is the present participle and gerund of exist.

Meaning of exist

Verb

exist (third-person singular simple present exists, present participle existing, simple past and past participle existed)

  1. (intransitive, stative) to be; have existence; have being or reality
    • Cognitive dissonance exists when a person possesses two cognitions, one of which is contradictory to the other1977, Lawrence S. Wrightsman with Kay Deaux, Social Psychology, page 366
    Synonyms:
    be, be a thing, consist, subsist

Adjective

existing (not comparable)

  1. That exists, or has existence, especially that exists now.
    • Since the launch early last year of […] two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the...2013 July 20, “The attack of the MOOCs”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845
    • In his favour, Beeching declared that he supported carrying on with the existing modernisation projects, but that the rest of the business needed root and branch reform.2023 March 8, Howard Johnston, “Was Marples the real railway wrecker?”, in RAIL, number 978, page 52
    Synonyms:
    existent

Synonyms of existing

Words formed from existing

Words that rhyme with existing

Questions about existing

What does existing mean?
Existing means that exists, or has existence, especially that exists now.
What is existing the present participle and gerund of?
Existing is the present participle and gerund of exist.
What part of speech is existing?
Existing is an adjective.
How do you pronounce existing?
Existing is pronounced /ɪɡˈzɪstɪŋ/.

Words near existing in the dictionary

  1. existest
  2. existeth
  3. existibility
  4. existible
  5. existimation
  6. existing
  7. existless
  8. existlessness
  9. exists
  10. exisulind
  11. exit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: existing (page history and authors); exist (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-existing.ogg.

Cite this entry: “existing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/existing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.