WordWeb Online

1. Still in existence
   "the Wollemi pine found in Australia is a surviving specimen of a conifer thought to have been long extinct and therefore known as a living fossil"; "the only surviving frontier blockhouse in Pennsylvania";
   - living

1. Continue to live and avoid dying
   "These superstitions survive in the backwaters of America";
   - last, live, live on, go, endure, hold up, hold out
    
2. Continue in existence after (an adversity, etc.)
   "He survived the cancer against all odds";
   - pull through, pull round, come through, make it
    
3. Support oneself, esp. at a minimal level
   "he could barely survive on such a low wage";
   - exist, live, subsist
    
4. Live longer than
   - outlive, outlast

See also: extant

Type of: defeat, get the better of, overcome

Encyclopedia: Surviving