permanent Hear it!

permanent Definition

per·ma·nent (pʉr′mə nənt)

adjective

  1. lasting or intended to last indefinitely without change
  2. lasting a relatively long time

Etymology: ME < MFr < L permanens, prp. of permanere < per, through + manere, to remain: see manor

noun

a hair wave that is produced as by applying chemical preparations and that remains even after the hair is washed

permanent Related Forms
per′·ma·nently adverb
permanent Synonyms

permanent

modif.

  1. Perpetual

    unchanging, continual, changeless; see perpetual 1.

  2. Intended to last for a considerable time

    durable, enduring, abiding, uninterrupted, stable, continuing, unremitting, unremittent, lasting, perdurable, firm, hard, tough, strong, rocklike, hardy, robust, sound, sturdy, steadfast, imperishable, surviving, living, long-lived, long-standing, invariable, persisting, tenacious, persevering, unyielding, resisting, resistant, impenetrable, recurring, wearing, constant, changeless, holding, persistent, perennial.

permanent Usage Examples

Adjective complement with noun phrase

  • make: I will look in to ways to make things more permanent soon.

Modifies a noun

  • residence: That is, those persons who do not have a normal permanent residence in the UK.
  • endowment: The trustees cannot normally spend permanent endowment without our authority.
  • exclusion: Recent figures show two thirds of permanent exclusions involve children with special needs.
  • fixture: Held at Lord's - the home of cricket, this is a permanent fixture in many diaries!
  • secretary: The Civil Service Management Board will be replaced with a Permanent Secretaries Management Group on which all first Permanent Secretaries will be represented.
  • establishment: For tax purposes, a Spanish branch office of a foreign company is considered a permanent establishment in Spain.

Modifying Another Word

  • almost: We've also seen wars become an almost permanent feature of human society.
  • relatively: Also, one tends to perceive an IM conversation as ephemeral and email as relatively permanent ( thus the CYA email tradition ).
  • apparently: Sometimes, of course, the hypnotic influence is so strong that a single treatment will produce an apparently permanent cure.
  • possibly: What GATS does do, however, is to entrench privatization and make it irreversible, possibly permanent.
  • then: Should you continue to post messages contrary to Forum rules then permanent banning will result.

Used with adjective complement

  • become: Once a PCV license has been gained your position will become permanent.
  • make: The agreement was made permanent the following month, on release of £ 6,000.
  • seem: The rout seems permanent; hence the smallness of the company at table since the voyage began.
  • go: This role is an initial 6- month contract with the possibility of going permanent.
  • grant: For the post which granted permanent are hard to.

Preposition: in

  • sense: The open meeting places could vary a lot in form and timing but be permanent in some approximate sense over the long term.

Preposition: for

  • candidate: There is the possibility of the roles converting to permanent for the right candidate.
  • artist: Permanence In Cotman Water Color, AA and A are regarded as permanent for artists ' use.
permanent Quotes

Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent† Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment: cheerfulness keeps up a kind of day-light in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

—Addison,Joseph

Our doom is, to be sifted by the wind, heaped up, smoothed down like silly sands. We are less permanent than thought.

—Bunting, Basil

But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

—Huxley, Aldous Leonard

Iamnot yet so lost inlexicographyastoforgetthat words arethe daughters of earth, and thatthings arethesons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but thesigns of ideas: Iwish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

—Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson

The word permanent†had its own kind of revenge on those who misused it, for the Bible said that nothing was permanent and everything came and went.

—Frame,Janet Paterson also known as Jean PatersonFrame

Das, worin man die nationalen Unterschiede findet, ist viel mehr, als man bis jetzt eingesehen hat, nur der Unterschied verschiedener Kulturstufen und zum geringstenTeile etwas Bleibendes (und auch dies nicht in einem strengen Sinne). National differences consist, far more than has hitherto been observed, only in the differences of variousgrades of culture, and are only to a very small extent permanent (and not even that in a strict sense).

—Nietzsche, FriedrichWilhelm