Etymology

existentialism

ex·ist·ent·i·al·i·sm
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Today it means: A 20th-century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices; also (generally), a philosophy which emphasizes existence over essence. Full definition →

English existential ← Late Latin exsistentiāli ← Proto-Indo-European *h₂élisder.?
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*h₁éǵʰ
  2. Proto-Indo-European*h₁éǵʰs
  3. Proto-Italic*eks
  4. Latinex
  5. Latinex-
  6. Proto-Indo-European*steh₂-
  7. Proto-Indo-European*stísteh₂ti
  8. Proto-Italic*sistō
  9. Latinsistō
  10. Latinexsistō
  11. Latinexsistēns
  12. Latinexsistentia
  13. Proto-Indo-European*h₂el-
  14. Proto-Indo-European*h₂élisder.?
  15. Late Latinexsistentiāli
  16. Englishexistential
  17. English todayexistentialism

From existential + -ism (suffix forming the names of schools of thought, systems, or theories), modelled after German Existentialismus. The word was popularized by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) in his work L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism is a Humanism, 1946).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.