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PERPETUALLY
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Dictionary entry overview: What does perpetually mean?
• PERPETUALLY (adverb)
The adverb PERPETUALLY has 2 senses:
1. everlastingly; for all time
2. without interruption
Familiarity information: PERPETUALLY used as an adverb is rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
Everlastingly; for all time
Context example:
rays...streaming perpetually from the sun
Pertainym:
perpetual (uninterrupted in time and indefinitely long continuing)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Without interruption
Synonyms:
always; constantly; forever; incessantly; perpetually
Context example:
the world is constantly changing
Pertainym:
perpetual (uninterrupted in time and indefinitely long continuing)
Context examples
For the first week after his attack he was perpetually violent.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
'My dear,' said I, 'you will blind yourself'—for tears were in her eyes perpetually.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
He was perpetually departing on yard-long adventures toward the cave's entrance, and as perpetually being driven back.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
It would be nothing; I could see him with perfect indifference, but I can hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Their ideas are perpetually conversant in lines and figures.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
“Upon my honour,” returned Markham, “town seems to sharpen a man's appetite. A man is hungry all day long. A man is perpetually eating.”
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
They had drawn back from many introductions, and still were perpetually having cards left by people of whom they knew nothing.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
I feel that I have betrayed myself perpetually—so unguarded in speaking of my partiality for the church!
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Remote lakes in a perpetually ice-free area of Antarctica show not only the chemical signature of ancient wildfires, but also some much more recent evidence of fossil-fuel combustion.
(Antarctic lakes are a repository for ancient soot, NSF)
He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; a variety of circumstances had prevented his marrying early, nor was it until the decline of life that he became a husband and the father of a family.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
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