How to Use subsist in a Sentence

subsist

verb
  • The author's right to royalties shall subsist for the term of the copyright.
  • Fed on moral scraps, the child must find her own meaning on which to subsist.
    — James Wood, New Yorker, 4 May 2026
  • Kajokaya said this jump in food costs forces many people to subsist on just one meal a day.
    — Ryan Bergeron, CNN, 3 Aug. 2022
  • Russell’s game subsists on handling the ball at the top of the key and running pick-and-rolls.
    — Connor Letourneau, SFChronicle.com, 1 July 2019
  • Huge men may subsist on food portions that would barely sustain small women.
    — William Neff, Washington Post, 8 Dec. 2022
  • The breakdowns still came, but not to an extent that Boston could subsist on them.
    — Rob Mahoney, SI.com, 20 May 2018
  • The larvae take two years to mature and subsist on sedges and grasses, while the adults sip nectar.
    — Andrew Warren, National Geographic, 16 Mar. 2016
  • People who were forced by debt to live in the poorhouse had to subsist on six and half pounds a year, paid from parish taxes.
    — Louis Menand, The New Yorker, 28 Sep. 2020
  • If the contact isn’t emphatic or the ball is hit at people, Colon can subsist.
    — Mark Bradley, ajc, 4 May 2017
  • Remember, no one can subsist only on popcorn, even during the warmer weeks.
    — A.a. Dowd, Vulture, 20 May 2024
  • Most attendees did not much care, subsisting in the club’s smoky kaleidoscope of flesh.
    — Matt Flegenheimer, New York Times, 21 Jan. 2018
  • My abuelito subsisted on takeout and whatever the cousins could bring by.
    — Alejandra Borunda, Bon Appetit, 2 Oct. 2017
  • Unable to chew, Wadsack mostly subsists on smoothies and purees these days.
    — Jocelyn Wiener, sacbee, 8 June 2017
  • Nearly everyone is dead, while most survivors subsist by looting and killing.
    — David James, Anchorage Daily News, 27 Mar. 2020
  • The country has a booming tech sector, but still half the nation subsists through agriculture.
    — Pradheep J. Shanker, National Review, 15 Aug. 2017
  • The real problem worth discussing, many argue, is that schools are subsisting on meager funds.
    — Aliyya Swaby, star-telegram, 24 Dec. 2017
  • Shiffrin had subsisted on a heavy diet of Coldplay for several years.
    — Tim Layden, SI.com, 29 Jan. 2018
  • The house subsists on grants, resident fees of $150 a week and donations.
    — Arelis R. Hernández, Washington Post, 5 July 2017
  • The competition is pitiless; only three per cent pass muster each year, while the rest barely manage to subsist.
    — Jiayang Fan, The New Yorker, 21 Apr. 2017
  • The area now houses strings of settlements of Syrian refugees, many of whom barely subsist.
    — Michael Kranish, Washington Post, 11 Oct. 2017
  • In the wake of these legal costs, Theranos has been subsisting on a loan backed by its patent portfolio since late last year.
    — Christopher Weaver, WSJ, 22 July 2018
  • The people subsist on fishing, hunting, and farming crops such as cassava and plantain.
    — Víctor Bastidas, Vogue, 22 Apr. 2022
  • Also, sick in the tissue and in the head and subsisting only on small amounts of sugar, tons of caffeine and a purse pharmacy.
    — Blake Bakkila, Health.com, 10 July 2018
  • For the nearly 35% of the workforce that subsists on freelance income, taxes can be extra tricky.
    — Josh Smith, USA TODAY, 15 Mar. 2018
  • Those prices are roughly in line with global standards but still out of reach for many Cubans who subsist on state salaries of about $30 a month.
    — Andrea Rodriguez, The Seattle Times, 5 Dec. 2018
  • In Brooklyn, Russell was a ball-dominant point guard whose game subsisted on pick-and-rolls.
    — Connor Letourneau, SFChronicle.com, 12 July 2019
  • The patient was mostly subsisting on french fries, Pringles, white bread, ham and sausage, according to the case report.
    — Time, 3 Sep. 2019
  • While the former requires, actually subsists, on no cookware at all, the latter requires a great big saute pan.
    — Julia Harrison, Architectural Digest, 23 June 2026
  • Nature programs love to point in amazement to the fact that the largest animals on the planet subsist on some of the smallest, namely the krill.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 20 Apr. 2018
  • Porters who usually cart supplies and gear up the peaks for well-paying foreign climbers were forced to subsist on government handouts of rice and lentils.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 5 Apr. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'subsist.' 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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