PERPETUATE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does perpetuate mean? 

• PERPETUATE (verb)
  The verb PERPETUATE has 1 sense:

1. cause to continue or prevail

  Familiarity information: PERPETUATE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERPETUATE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they perpetuate    ... he / she / it perpetuates   
Past simple: perpetuated   
Past participle: perpetuated   
-ing form: perpetuating   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Cause to continue or prevail

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Context example:

perpetuate a myth

Hypernyms (to "perpetuate" is one way to...):

bear on; carry on; continue; preserve; uphold (keep or maintain in unaltered condition; cause to remain or last)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "perpetuate"):

eternize (cause to continue indefinitely)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

perpetuation (the act of prolonging something)

 Context examples 

As my nephew, you might have taken your position by perpetuating my own delicacy of taste.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Why should you not take the chance of perpetuating your own name?" said Summerlee, with his usual touch of acidity.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The disgrace of his first marriage might, perhaps, as there was no reason to suppose it perpetuated by offspring, have been got over, had he not done worse; but he had, as by the accustomary intervention of kind friends, they had been informed, spoken most disrespectfully of them all, most slightingly and contemptuously of the very blood he belonged to, and the honours which were hereafter to be his own.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

That these meshes; beginning with alarming and falsified accounts of the estate of which Mr. W. is the receiver, at a period when Mr. W. had launched into imprudent and ill-judged speculations, and may not have had the money, for which he was morally and legally responsible, in hand; going on with pretended borrowings of money at enormous interest, really coming from—HEEP—and by—HEEP—fraudulently obtained or withheld from Mr. W. himself, on pretence of such speculations or otherwise; perpetuated by a miscellaneous catalogue of unscrupulous chicaneries—gradually thickened, until the unhappy Mr. W. could see no world beyond.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)