Over the last decades an experiential comprehension of leisure has spread in Leisure Studies. In order to correctly understand all implications of this theoretical paradigm, the deep change in the concept of experience that it represents has to be taken into account. This article tries to contribute to this task by pointing out the transformations of the notion of "lived experience" ("vivencia"), from its origins to the current understanding. With this purpose, we will collect the successive functions the concept plays in different theoretical discourses, as well as its insertion in the general linguistic use, which is indicative of the changes at the social practices level. The article stays within a clear spatial and temporal framework, which refers to Germany between the 30s of the 19th century and the same decade of the next century, since this is the arena where the main discussions that prepare the current sense of the concept of lived experience took place.
