Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act or state of subsisting.
  • noun A means of subsisting, especially means barely sufficient to maintain life.
  • noun Something that has real or substantial existence.
  • noun Christianity Hypostasis.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Real being; actual existence.
  • noun Continuance; continued existence.
  • noun That which exists or has real being.
  • noun The act or process of furnishing support to animal life, or that which is furnished; means of support; support; livelihood.
  • noun The state of being subsistent; inherence in something else: as. the subsistence of qualities in bodies.
  • noun Synonyms Sustenance, etc. See living.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Real being; existence.
  • noun Inherency.
  • noun That which furnishes support to animal life; means of support; provisions, or that which produces provisions; livelihood.
  • noun (Theol.) Same as Hypostasis, 2.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Real being; existence.
  • noun Inherency; as, the subsistence of qualities in bodies.
  • noun That which furnishes support to animal life; means of support; provisions, or that which produces provisions; livelihood; as, a meager subsistence.
  • noun theology A person, specifically the person of Christ or of another part of the Trinity; hypostasis.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun minimal (or marginal) resources for subsisting
  • noun the state of existing in reality; having substance
  • noun a means of surviving

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Late Latin subsistentia ("substance, reality, in Medieval Latin also stability"), from Latin subsistens, present participle of subsistere ("to continue, subsist"); see subsist.

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