a. [ad. late L. existentiāl-is, f. existentia EXISTENCE.]
1. Of or pertaining to existence.
1693. trans. Barlow’s Exercit., i. Rem. 483. Enjoying the good of existence … and … the being deprived of that existential good.
1809–10. Coleridge, Friend (1818), III. 96, note. The essential cause of fiendish guilt, when it makes itself existential and peripheric.
1878. S. Hodgson, Philos. Refl., II. III. vii. § 1. 12. There is a certain parallelism between the logical and existential analyses.
2. Logic. Of a proposition, etc.: Expressing the fact of existence; predicating existence.
1837–8. Sir W. Hamilton, Logic, xiii. (1866), II. 229. Existential propositions, that is, those in which mere existence is predicated. Ibid. (1846), Dissert., in Reid’s Wks., 811/1. The character of the existential Judgments they involve.
1888. J. Venn, in Mind, July, 414–5. Convention does not allow us to say ‘It executes.’… But we can just as conveniently adopt the existential form, ‘There was an execution.’
Hence Existentially adv., by virtue of existence.
a. 1834. Coleridge, Wks. (1868), V. 319 (Webster, 1864). Whether God was existentially as well as essentially intelligent.
