How to Use existential in a Sentence

existential

adjective
  • Yes, there’s the existential dread that comes with choosing a career path in the arts.
    Seth Combs, San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 July 2023
  • And the core of the front office doesn’t seem to be grappling with any existential crisis.
    Jack Harris, Los Angeles Times, 18 Oct. 2023
  • His Nazis are evil enough, and the movie does acknowledge the existential threat of the Holocaust.
    Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times, 28 Apr. 2023
  • All in all, that’s just the right existential headspace for a museum trip.
    Vulture, 4 Dec. 2023
  • Looming over all of this is an existential threat to ICWA.
    Jessica Lussenhop, ProPublica, 15 June 2023
  • To me, every story involves travel in, in the existential sense of the word.
    Cnt Editors, Condé Nast Traveler, 2 Nov. 2023
  • The years-long delays are an existential threat to many projects’ chances of getting built.
    Ella Nilsen, CNN, 16 Sep. 2024
  • The specter of that was read by Israel, quite rightly, as an existential threat.
    Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 20 Feb. 2023
  • Yeah, that’s, that would be the next existential crisis.
    Quartz Staff, Quartz, 5 May 2023
  • In truth, this is hardly an existential matter for the league.
    Rory Smith, New York Times, 24 Nov. 2023
  • In the background of this narrative is a more existential crisis of the woodland.
    Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Jan. 2024
  • But writers on the picket lines view AI as an existential threat.
    Stephen Humphries, The Christian Science Monitor, 30 May 2023
  • The cast chaotically tries to build a new restaurant—and gets existential about working in the food world.
    Sam Stone, Bon Appétit, 22 June 2023
  • One reason the risks may be downplayed is that some in the tech industry say fears of existential risks from AI are overblown.
    Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 13 June 2024
  • Kindergarten is a bit early to be fed that existential nugget.
    Carolyn Hax, Washington Post, 29 Mar. 2024
  • It may be seen as an existential threat by state parties.
    Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 31 Mar. 2023
  • The whole thing has thrown life into an existential tailspin, and turned his status as Ryder’s go-to guy into a thing of the past.
    David Fear, Rolling Stone, 13 Mar. 2024
  • The fear of catastrophic events and existential threats is not confined to the United States.
    Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, Forbes, 13 Aug. 2023
  • Take a drink every time someone mentions Trump 2024 (to ease the existential dread).
    Vulture, 22 Dec. 2023
  • In the weeks after the 2020 election, Fox News faced an existential crisis.
    Jeremy Barr, Washington Post, 18 Feb. 2023
  • As the Golden Globes turn the page on an existential crisis, a battered Hollywood is eager to welcome the awards back to the fold.
    Shelby Grad, Los Angeles Times, 5 Jan. 2024
  • But the setting is small too and the end of the world quickly arrives at the building’s front door for a second half that lands like an existential roof collapse.
    Alison Foreman, IndieWire, 10 Sep. 2024
  • The prospect of going to space has evoked a sort of existential journey for the university student.
    Ineye Komonibo, refinery29.com, 11 Aug. 2023
  • All of these changes have made for an existential moment for doctors, too: The disease they were trained to treat is no longer the disease most of their patients have.
    Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 7 Mar. 2024
  • Has that structure eased the existential dilemma of daily life for you?
    Katie Bain, Billboard, 22 May 2024
  • Blom: As a psychologist, this is like one’s wet dream to be able to talk about death, an existential issue like this.
    Randee Dawn, Los Angeles Times, 19 June 2023
  • While those who do believe in existential AI threats will say that all Anthropic has done is taught the machine to lie.
    James Vincent, The Verge, 9 May 2023
  • There are some signs that a grassroots movement is building around fears of A.I.’s existential risks.
    Byjeremy Kahn, Fortune, 26 May 2023
  • The machinist strike, which represents an existential threat on several fronts, is in its 47th day with no clear end in sight.
    Melvin Backman, Quartz, 29 Oct. 2024
  • But unlike many liberal Democrats, Cartwright doesn’t talk about climate change as an existential threat.
    Byjeffrey Mervis, science.org, 28 Oct. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'existential.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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