perennial
/pəˈɹɛn.j(ə)l/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.51 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
4
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Lasting or remaining active throughout the year, for multiple years, or all the time.
adj
Continuing without cessation or intermission for several years, or for an undetermined or infinite period; never-ending or never failing; perpetual, unceasing.
adj
adj
adj
Of a plant: active throughout the year, or having a life cycle of more than two growing seasons.
noun
A plant that is active throughout the year, or has a life cycle of more than two growing seasons.
Example Sentences
- "a perennial stream"
- "[W]hat is most admirable is the vast enclosure, and variety of ground, in yᵉ large garden, containing vineyards, cornefields, meadows, groves (whereof one is of perennial greens), and walkes of vast lengthes, so accurately kept and cultivated, that nothing can be more agreeable."
- "And there is ſuch a thing as Subterraneous Heat, […] [a]s is manifeſt from the ſmoking of perennial Fountains in froſty VVeather, and VVater dravvn out of Pumps and open VVells."
- "It [the pond] is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference, and contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation."
- "That desert's age the gorge may prove, / Piercing profound the mountain bare; / Yet hardly churned out in the groove / By a perennial wear and tear / Of floods; nay, dry it shows within; / But twice a year the waters flow, / Nor then in tide, but dribbling thin: […]"
- "These offshore Sonoman mountains likely formed an orogenic (mountainous) barrier to moisture inland, resulting in a mountain-shadow onshore desert punctuated by regional annual and large basin perennial streams draining into a forearc saline sea."
Etymology
The adjective is borrowed from Latin perennis (“lasting through the whole year or for several years, perennial; continual, everlasting, perpetual”) + English -al (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives). Perennis is derived from per- (“completive or intensifying prefix with the sense of doing something all the way through or entirely”) + annus (“year; season, time”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂et- (“to go”)). By surface analysis, per- + -ennial. The noun is derived from the adjective. Cognates * Middle French pérenne (modern French pérenne (“lasting through the whole year, perennial”)) * Italian perenne (“lasting for a long time”) * Spanish perenne (“eternal; permanent; a perennial plant”)
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *per-, perennis, *h₂et-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /pəˈɹɛn.j(ə)l/
- British English: /pəˈɹɛn.ɪ.əl/