Meaning

Lasting or remaining active throughout the year, for multiple years, or all the time..

Definitions by Sense

1. Lasting or remaining active throughout the year, for multiple years, or all the time.
2. Continuing without cessation or intermission for several years, or for an undetermined or infinite period; never-ending or never failing; perpetual, unceasing.
3. Appearing or recurring again and again; recurrent.
4. (botany) Of a plant: active throughout the year, or having a life cycle of more than two growing seasons.
5. (botany) A plant that is active throughout the year, or has a life cycle of more than two growing seasons.
6. A thing that lasts forever.
7. A person or thing (such as a problem) that appears or returns regularly.

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.

His artwork has a perennial beauty.

There, on perennial Adamant deſign'd, / The various Fortunes of your Race you'll find: […]

Word Forms

• perennials

Synonyms for perennial

Antonyms for perennial

Related Words

When Should You Use Perennial?

Use perennial when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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