| English Dictionary |
PERENNIAL
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Dictionary entry overview: What does perennial mean?
• PERENNIAL (noun)
The noun PERENNIAL has 1 sense:
1. (botany) a plant lasting for three seasons or more
Familiarity information: PERENNIAL used as a noun is very rare.
• PERENNIAL (adjective)
The adjective PERENNIAL has 3 senses:
1. lasting three seasons or more
2. lasting an indefinitely long time; suggesting self-renewal
3. recurring again and again
Familiarity information: PERENNIAL used as an adjective is uncommon.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
(botany) a plant lasting for three seasons or more
Classified under:
Nouns denoting plants
Hypernyms ("perennial" is a kind of...):
flora; plant; plant life ((botany) a living organism lacking the power of locomotion)
Domain category:
botany; phytology (the branch of biology that studies plants)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "perennial"):
button snakeroot; Eryngium yuccifolium; rattlesnake's master; rattlesnake master (coarse prickly perennial eryngo of United States thought to cure rattlesnake bite)
Derivation:
perennate (survive from season to season, of plants)
perennial (lasting three seasons or more)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Lasting three seasons or more
Context example:
the common buttercup is a popular perennial plant
Domain category:
botany; phytology (the branch of biology that studies plants)
Antonym:
annual (completing its life cycle within a year)
biennial (having a life cycle lasting two seasons)
Derivation:
perennial ((botany) a plant lasting for three seasons or more)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Lasting an indefinitely long time; suggesting self-renewal
Context example:
perennial happiness
Similar:
long (primarily temporal sense; being or indicating a relatively great or greater than average duration or passage of time or a duration as specified)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Recurring again and again
Synonyms:
perennial; recurrent; repeated
Context example:
perennial efforts to stipulate the requirements
Similar:
continual (recurring regularly or frequently in a prolonged and closely spaced series)
Context examples
An extract of the rhizome of the perennial plant Zingiber officinale with potential antineoplastic activity.
(Ginger Extract, NCI Thesaurus)
An eastern North American perennial herb.
(Black cohosh, NCI Dictionary)
It is used for symptomatic treatment of seasonal and perennial allergic rhinitis and for chronic urticaria.
(Cetirizine, NCI Thesaurus)
A characteristic of a medicinal product, specifying that its most predominant agreeable savor detected by the unified sensation of taste and olfactory receptors resembles ginger, the rhizome of the perennial plant Zingiber officinale.
(Ginger Flavor, NCI Thesaurus)
Amitrole is a widely used herbicide for nonfood croplands to control annual and perennial grass type weeds, pondweeds and broad leaf.
(Amitrole, NCI Thesaurus)
The perennial whiskey glass was in his hands, and he drained it with shaking fingers.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The plants are described as glabrous perennials, erect and usually woody at the base.
(Hypericum perforatum, NCI Thesaurus)
There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
A genus of slow-growing perennial plants with fleshy roots of the family Araliaceae native to the Northern Hemisphere.
(Ginseng, NCI Thesaurus)
A fresh, dried or processed form of the rhizome of the Asian perennial plant Zingiber officinale (ginger) with potential anti-emetic activity.
(Ginger, NCI Thesaurus)
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