existing

American  

[ig-zis-ting] / ɪgˈzɪs tɪŋ /

adjective

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

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Other Word Forms

• nonexisting adjective
• unexisting adjective

Etymology

Origin of existing

exist ( def. ) + -ing ² ( def. )

Example Sentences

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

Those headwinds for existing owners make new houses more critical.

From Barron's • Apr. 3, 2026

AI developers are more focused on earning subscription revenue and adding agentic capabilities to existing offerings, thus they have no incentive to back an open-source option, Zhang adds.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 3, 2026

“Would Apple continue to pay Starlink hundreds of millions of dollars per year to support connectivity on existing iPhones?”

From MarketWatch • Apr. 2, 2026

Currently, the only existing STM is a prototype—known as STM1—located at latitude 39.605829 and longitude -75.718580, in the Spatial Teleportation Laboratory at the University of Delaware.

From "The First State of Being" by Erin Entrada Kelly

Related Words

• actual
• current
• extant