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survivor

nouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//səˈvaɪvə//
  • United States//sɚˈvaɪvɚ//

One who survives, especially one who survives a traumatic experience.

noun

  1. 1

    One who survives, especially one who survives a traumatic experience.

    From this moment on, I choose to live not as a victim, but as a survivor.

    Believing that requires trust, and trust is understandably a tough issue for those of us who are survivors.

  2. 2

    figurativeA person who is able to endure hardship.

    I'm a survivor. We're a dying breed.

  3. 3

    One who knew a specific decedent.

    She was from a large family and had many friends, so the funeral was crowded with mourning survivors.

    They left no immediate survivors.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *úp Proto-Indo-European *-er Proto-Indo-European *upér Proto-Italic *super Latin super Latin super- Proto-Indo-European *gʷeyh₃- Proto-Indo-European *-wós Proto-Indo-European *gʷih₃wós Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *gʷíh₃weti Proto-Italic *gʷīwō Latin vīvō Latin supervīvereder. English survive English -or English survivor From survive + -or.

Forms

plural
survivors
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).