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perpetual

adjectivenounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//pəˈpɛtʃʊəl//
  • United Kingdom//pəˈpɛtjʊəl//
  • United States//pɚˈpɛt͡ʃuəl//

Lasting forever, or for an indefinitely long time.

adjective

  1. 1

    Lasting forever, or for an indefinitely long time.

  2. 2

    Set up to be in effect or have tenure for an unlimited duration.

    perpetual copyright

  3. 3

    Continuing; uninterrupted.

    "And yet," returned Francesca, "the secret of Arden's sufferings seems to have been in himself. From earliest youth he indulged in vain contrasts and repinings, and even his very love was selfish and cruel. Think how much happiness he lost by his perpetual exaggerations!"

    There are perpetual requests for changes as new payloads and new demands and modifications are suggested by the users.

  4. 4

    Flowering throughout the growing season.

    By means of artificial hybridization, practised for a series of years, he has succeeded in producing a race of carnations which are perpetual bloomers.

    The hybrid perpetual roses as a rule require to be pruned to within 4 to 6 inches of the ground.

Etymology

From Middle English perpetuel, from Old French perpetuel, from Latin perpetuālis (“universal”), from perpetuus, from petō.

noun

  1. 1

    Variant of perpetual checkEllipsis of perpetual check.

Forms

plural
perpetuals
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).