SURVIVAL • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Survival

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/sərvˈaɪvəl/ Listen

noun

Survival n.

A living or continuing longer than, or beyond the existence of, another person, thing, or event; an outliving.

(Arhaeol. & Ethnol.) Any habit, usage, or belief, remaining from ancient times, the origin of which is often unknown, or imperfectly known. "The close bearing of the doctrine of survival on the study of manners and customs."

Survival of the fittest. (Biol.) See Natural selection, under Natural.

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Etymology of 'Survival'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Survival" Quotes from Famous Books

... simple-life homes. It was the same Bios whose nature and drift and ways and methods and aspects engaged them all. And she, she in her own person too, was this eternal Bios, beginning again its recurrent journey to selection and multiplication and failure or survival. ...

— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... looked: "Rameses and David and Mahomet and Constantine, and how many conquests have been made in the name of God! But after other conquests there have been peace and order and law. Here in Egypt it is ever the sword, the survival ...

— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... based on the presumption that the natives would co-operate or at least not obstruct. You see what the situation actually is. It should be obvious to everybody that the behavior of these natives is nullifying everything the civil government is trying to do to ensure the survival of the Terran colonists, the production of Terran-type food without which we would all starve, the biocrystal plantations without which the Colony would perish, and even the natives themselves. Yet the ...

— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper

... little dustin'; but once when I had to bake sourdough bread, I pointed out that the garden needed weedin', an' explained to him just what effect weedin' had on garden truck. He sez to me, "My motto is, 'Competition results in the survival of the fittest.' I ain't no Socialist." When I asked him what this bunch of words meant, he told me that he didn't know of any exercise 'at would do me so much good as learnin' to think for myself; an' that's all the satisfaction I could get out of him. He was some like other edicated ...

— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... and fall in silence there. Nature with her terrible club, "Survival of the Fittest"; and Civilisation with her cruel sword, "Supply and Demand," beat them back, and they give way inch by inch, fighting to the end. But it is in a dumb, sullen way, that is not sufficiently ...

— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

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