existing
Americanadjective
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already or previously in place, before being replaced, altered, or added to.
Fundraising costs money, and recruiting new donors is more expensive than asking existing supporters to give a little more.
-
having actual being or life.
The great ornithologist Alexander Wetmore, who died in 1978, allegedly declared that all existing species of birds had already been discovered.
-
occurring in a specified place or under specified conditions.
Members of committees dealing with the behavior of intelligence services met to discuss the existing challenges and exchange best practices.
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achieving only the basic needs of existence, as food and shelter.
Forrest Bess was a marginally existing bait fisherman and artist who lived in a ramshackle cabin on the Gulf of Mexico.
Other Word Forms
- nonexisting adjective
- unexisting adjective
Etymology
Origin of existing
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Apple's string of hits has arguably slowed since the death of its visionary co-founder Steve Jobs, as the company focuses more on refining its existing technology.
From BBC • Apr. 4, 2026
Traditional software firms are often sending FDEs to implement existing products instead of engineering new solutions.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 4, 2026
A new medication has been found to significantly reduce blood pressure in people whose levels remain dangerously high even after taking multiple existing drugs.
From Science Daily • Apr. 3, 2026
ServiceNow is integrating Moveworks’s conversational AI assistant and reasoning agent, enhancing the way users interact with its existing agentic platform.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 3, 2026
How can we account for the empirical observation that band or tribal organization just does not work for societies of hundreds of thousands of people, and that all existing large societies have complex centralized organization?
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
