ETERNITY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does eternity mean? 

• ETERNITY (noun)
  The noun ETERNITY has 3 senses:

1. time without end

2. a state of eternal existence believed in some religions to characterize the afterlife

3. a seemingly endless time interval (waiting)

  Familiarity information: ETERNITY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ETERNITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Time without end

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

eternity; infinity

Hypernyms ("eternity" is a kind of...):

time (the continuum of experience in which events pass from the future through the present to the past)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "eternity"):

alpha and omega (the first and last; signifies God's eternity)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A state of eternal existence believed in some religions to characterize the afterlife

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

eternity; timeless existence; timelessness

Hypernyms ("eternity" is a kind of...):

being; beingness; existence; face of the earth (the state or fact of existing)

Derivation:

eternal (continuing forever or indefinitely)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A seemingly endless time interval (waiting)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Hypernyms ("eternity" is a kind of...):

interval; time interval (a definite length of time marked off by two instants)

Derivation:

eternal (tiresomely long; seemingly without end)

 Context examples 

“And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

For she is not a grinning devil now—not any more a foul Thing for all eternity.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

He little knew that the woman who faced him at every meal was the woman whose husband he had hurried at an hour’s notice into eternity.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

He linked the past with the present, and the eternity behind him throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and seasons swayed.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Eternity is before me: I had better tell her.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It seemed to me that we were all going to eternity together.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Once so caught, and nine or ten inches of the blood-stained dirk would be my last experience on this side of eternity.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

We could not come before; the old devil of a coachmaker was such an eternity finding out a thing fit to be got into, and now it is ten thousand to one but they break down before we are out of the street.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)