nonexistent
Britishadjective
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not having being or existence
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not present under specified conditions or in a specified place
Other Word Forms
Explanation
Something that's nonexistent doesn't really exist. When your cat hisses at her reflection in the mirror, she's attacking a nonexistent enemy. The adjective nonexistent describes something that's not real. Your nonexistent problems are only in your imagination, for example, and you may pretend to answer a nonexistent phone call to avoid an awkward conversation with an acquaintance at the post office. The word existent is at the heart of nonexistent, with its root of existence. They all come from the Latin word exsistere, "to come into being, to appear, or to be."
Vocabulary lists containing nonexistent
Zilch, Zip, Nada: Words For Nothing
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Nobody's Home: Synonyms For "Absent"
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The Phantom Tollbooth
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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.
You have entered a zero-gravity field where you can do whatever you want, because the actual material impact on you is nonexistent.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 22, 2026
Tishman Speyer explained that the area "has one of the lowest office availability rates in Manhattan", adding: "Construction of new office supply in the neighbourhood has been virtually nonexistent for decades."
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
Starting in boyhood, an American designer and artist named Donald Evans created thousands of fictitious stamps from nonexistent countries, using a typewriter to punch out the perforations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
To buttress their argument that an expert cannot be used as a back channel for “inadmissible hearsay,” they pointed to a nonexistent 2021 case brought by the government.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026
It turned out that Evan Parker, and his strict mom, and his nonexistent finances culminated in some of my most pivotal memories from high school.
From "Americanized" by Sara Saedi
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
