Word.ws English Dictionary

nonexist

nonexist verb: to not exist; to unexist.

Verb

nonexist (third-person singular simple present nonexists, present participle nonexisting, simple past and past participle nonexisted)

  1. (intransitive) To not exist; to unexist.
    • Nothing is by the laws of the mind to be held as having no beginning, which we can rationally conceive to have once nonexisted and then begun.1860, Charles Kittredge True, The Elements of Logic, page 167
    • The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way.1974, Stanisław Lem, translated by Michael Kandel, The Cyberiad

Examples of nonexist in a sentence

  • Like the Buddha, samsara and Nirvana neither exist nor nonexist, nor both exist and nonexist, nor neither exist nor nonexist.1974, John Boyer Noss, Man’s Religions, fifth edition, page 160:
  • Of something that does not satisfy the presupposition of the pair exists and nonexists, and so neither exists nor nonexists, we cannot ask why it exists.1993, Daniel Kolak, Self, Cosmos, God, page 370:

Forms of nonexist

third-person singular presentnonexists
present participlenonexisting
past participlenonexisted
pastnonexisted

Origin of nonexist

Probably a back-formation from nonexistent. By surface analysis, non- + exist.

Questions about nonexist

What does nonexist mean?
Nonexist means to not exist; to unexist.
How do you use nonexist in a sentence?
Like the Buddha, samsara and Nirvana neither exist nor nonexist, nor both exist and nonexist, nor neither exist nor nonexist.
What part of speech is nonexist?
Nonexist is a verb.
What is the past tense of nonexist?
The past tense of nonexist is nonexisted.

Words near nonexist in the dictionary

  1. nonexhibited
  2. nonexhibiting
  3. nonexhibition
  4. nonexhibitionist
  5. nonexhibitionistic
  6. nonexist
  7. nonexistant
  8. nonexisted
  9. nonexistence
  10. nonexistences
  11. nonexistent

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nonexist (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.

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