PERSEVERANCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does perseverance mean? 

• PERSEVERANCE (noun)
  The noun PERSEVERANCE has 2 senses:

1. persistent determination

2. the act of persisting or persevering; continuing or repeating behavior

  Familiarity information: PERSEVERANCE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PERSEVERANCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Persistent determination

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

doggedness; perseverance; persistence; persistency; pertinacity; tenaciousness; tenacity

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

determination; purpose (the quality of being determined to do or achieve something; firmness of purpose)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The act of persisting or persevering; continuing or repeating behavior

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

perseverance; perseveration; persistence

Context example:

his perseveration continued to the point where it was no longer appropriate

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

continuance; continuation (the act of continuing an activity without interruption)

Derivation:

persevere (be persistent, refuse to stop)

 Context examples 

Oh! no; I was pleased with my own perseverance in asking questions; and amused to think how little information I obtained.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Well, then, he said, I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Some resentment did arise at a perseverance so selfish and ungenerous.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

A little further perseverance in patience and forced cheerfulness on Anne's side produced nearly a cure on Mary's.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

It was one of the irons I began to heat immediately, and one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at, with a perseverance I may honestly admire.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

At last she recollected that she had been travelling, and they talked of Matlock and Dove Dale with great perseverance.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Beppo did not despair, and he conducted his search with considerable ingenuity and perseverance.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He wheedled, bribed, ridiculed, threatened, and scolded; affected indifference, that he might surprise the truth from her; declared he knew, then that he didn't care; and at last, by dint of perseverance, he satisfied himself that it concerned Meg and Mr. Brooke.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

He said much of his earnest desire of their living in the most sociable terms with his family, and pressed them so cordially to dine at Barton Park every day till they were better settled at home, that, though his entreaties were carried to a point of perseverance beyond civility, they could not give offence.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I am practically industrious—painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour—but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)