The word 'existential' has undergone one of the most dramatic expansions in modern English vocabulary. Originally a dry scholastic adjective meaning 'pertaining to existence' (as opposed to essence), it was transformed by twentieth-century philosophy into one of the most emotionally charged words in the language — and then further transformed by popular culture into a casual descriptor for any feeling of meaninglessness or anxiety.
The Latin foundation is the verb 'existere' (also spelled 'exsistere'), meaning to come forth, emerge, appear, or come into being. The components are 'ex-' (out of, from) and 'sistere' (to cause to stand, a causative form of 'stāre,' to stand). The Proto-Indo-European root *steh₂- (to stand) is one of the most productive in the family, generating 'stand,' 'state,' 'station,' 'stable,' 'statute,' 'status,' 'substance,' 'circumstance,' 'resist,' 'persist,' 'insist,' and scores more. To exist, etymologically, is to stand forth
Medieval Latin philosophers developed 'existentia' as a technical term contrasted with 'essentia' (essence). The distinction was fundamental to scholastic philosophy: a thing's essence is what it is (its definition, its nature), while its existence is that it is (the fact of its being actual rather than merely possible). For most medieval thinkers, following Aristotle and Aquinas, essence preceded existence — things had natures before and independently of their actually existing.
The revolution came in the nineteenth century with Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), who inverted the priority. Kierkegaard argued that for human beings, existence precedes essence — we exist first and define ourselves through our choices afterward. There is no predetermined human nature that determines what we should be; we are 'thrown' into existence and must create meaning through our decisions. This insight, expressed in Danish but
The word 'existential' acquired its specifically philosophical resonance in the twentieth century through Martin Heidegger's 'Being and Time' (1927) and Jean-Paul Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' (1943). Heidegger distinguished between 'existenziell' (relating to an individual's concrete experience of existence) and 'existenzial' (relating to the philosophical structures of existence itself). Sartre, writing in French, used 'existentiel' and declared that 'existence precedes essence' — the defining slogan of existentialism.
Sartre's existentialism became a cultural phenomenon in postwar Paris. Suddenly, 'existential' was not just a philosophical term but a lifestyle label: existentialists wore black, frequented Left Bank cafes, listened to jazz, and confronted the absurdity of existence. Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus (who resisted the label), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty extended the philosophy in different directions, but the popular image remained: existentialism was about confronting the void and choosing to act anyway.
The phrase 'existential crisis' emerged from this philosophical context but has since migrated far from it. In clinical psychology, an existential crisis involves fundamental questioning of one's purpose, identity, and meaning — a genuine confrontation with the contingency of human existence. In popular usage, it has become almost comically diluted: 'I had an existential crisis in the cereal aisle' is a perfectly normal sentence in twenty-first-century English.
The geopolitical sense — 'existential threat,' meaning a threat to the very existence of a nation, institution, or species — adds yet another dimension. Climate change is described as an existential threat; nuclear weapons pose an existential risk. Here the word returns closer to its Latin root: a threat to existence itself, to the continued standing-forth of something in the world.
The word's journey from medieval scholastic jargon to Parisian cafe philosophy to Instagram caption is a case study in how philosophical concepts are democratized, diluted, and transformed as they pass from technical to popular usage.