eternal
/ɪˈtɝ.nl̩/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.11 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Existing outside time; as opposed to sempiternal, existing within time but everlastingly.
adj
Example Sentences
- "But here again it is another question, quite different from our having an idea of eternity, to know whether there were any real being, whose duration has been eternal."
- "Thy smoking altar shall be fat with food / Of incense and the grateful steam of blood; / Burnt-offerings morn and evening shall be thine, / And fires eternal in thy temple shine."
- "Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything."
- "In a bid to understand the eternal mystery that is woman, Bart goes to the least qualified possible source for advice and counsel: his father, who remarkably seems to have made it to his mid-30s without quite figuring out much of anything."
- "Beneath him you might have seen the three of us - myself, sunburnt, young, and vigorous after our open-air tramp; Summerlee, solemn but still critical, behind his eternal pipe; Lord John, as keen as a razor-edge, with his supple, alert figure leaning upon his rifle, and his eager eyes fixed eagerly upon the speaker."
- "some eternal villain"
Etymology
From Middle English eternal, from Old French eternal, from Late Latin aeternālis, from Latin aeternus (“eternal”), from aevum (“age”). Displaced native Old English ēċe.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *h₂ey-, eternal, aeternālis, aeternus
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɪˈtɝ.nl̩/
- British English: /ɪˈtɜː.nl̩/
Usage
Inflected Forms
more eternal (comparative)
most eternal (superlative)
æternal (alternative, obsolete)
æternall (alternative, obsolete)
eternall (alternative, obsolete)
eternals (plural)