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Subsist vs Insist - What's the difference?

subsist | insist |

As verbs the difference between subsist and insist

is that subsist is to survive on a minimum of resources while insist is to hold up a claim emphatically.

subsist

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To survive on a minimum of resources.
  • * Atterbury
  • to subsist on other men's charity
  • (mostly, philosophy) To have ontological reality; to exist.
  • * Alexander Pope
  • And makes what happiness we justly call, / Subsist not in the good of one, but all.
  • To continue; to retain a certain state.
  • * Milton
  • Firm we subsist , yet possible to swerve.

    insist

    English

    Alternative forms

    * ensist

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To hold up a claim emphatically.
  • (I am defending her; see a similar example in the context below for comparison.)
  • *
  • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5 , passage=But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud,
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=70, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Engineers of a different kind , passage=Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist . Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.}}
  • To demand continually that something happen or be done.
  • To stand (on); to rest (upon); to lean (upon).
  • * 1709 , Venturus Mandey, Synopsis Mathematica Universalis
  • Angles likewise which insist on the Diameter, are all Right Angles.