This has been bothering me practically forever.
What does "existential" mean? I see the word all the time, particularly in scholarly articles and college texts. Usually I can derive meaning from context, but not here. Sometimes I even question whether writers know what they mean by it. It usually seems to function as a decidedly pretentious pseudo-intellectual literary panacea (oh the irony--yes the irony is intentional).
I don't understand the definition on dictionary.com and apparently it has no synonyms.
existential - Synonyms from Thesaurus.com
So, enlighten me please.