- lasting
- lasting, permanent, perdurable, durable, stable, perpetual mean enduring for so long as to seem fixed or established.Lasting may imply long continuance with no end in sight; in this sense, it may be close in connotation to everlasting{
who . . . sings his soul and body to their lasting rest— Shak.
}More typically, however, it does not imply endlessness, but rather a surprising capacity to continue indefinitely{the anger of slow, mild, loving people has a lasting quality that mere bad-tempered folk cannot understand— Deland
}{an excellent mind, shrewd wit, and an amazing capacity for developing lasting friendships— Douglas
}Permanent applies chiefly to things which are not temporary, tentative, transitory, or fluctuating but which continue or are likely or expected to continue indefinitely or as long as relevant; thus, a permanent position may be expected to continue on the one hand until death or retirement removes the employee holding it or, on the other, until fundamental changes in or termination of the business of the employer renders it superfluous; permanent damage to an object is damage that will remain as long as the object persists{settled down and made a permanent home for his family
}{the stimulation of violent emotions may leave permanent traces on the mind— Inge
}{much of the current literature on this subject, both ephemeral and of permanent value, comes out of Russia— Sokolsky
}Perdurable carries a stronger implication than does lasting in its typical use of endlessness of existence; but it suggests endless or apparently endless existence especially from the point of view of human remembrance or human history{makes him one of the few perdurable figures of our Civil War and secures him a sainthood that slander has not been able to violate— Cargill
}{our literature is going to be our most perdurable claim on man's remembrance— Quiller-Couch
}Durable implies power of resistance to destructive agencies; it usually suggests a capacity for lasting that exceeds that of other things of the same kind or sort{a durable pavement
}{durable color
}{more durable than brass— Junius
}{many writers have longed for durable renown— L. P. Smith
}Stable applies to what is so firmly or solidly established that it cannot be moved or changed; the term therefore is applicable to things that are lasting or durable because they are deeply rooted, or finely balanced, or infixed and not subject or likely to be subject to fluctuations{a stable foundation
}{a stable form of government
}{stable institutions
}{the stable earth and the changing day— George Eliot
}{men as steady as . . . wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment— Huxley
}{a relatively stable society . . . where the individual remains, both physically and socially, in the place in which he was born— Cheek
}Perpetual (see also CONTINUAL) is in many respects closer to permanent than to the remaining terms but it differs from it signally in the absence of any notion of relevance and may approach everlasting in its suggestion of an endless course or a going on without a prospect of something intervening to bring about an end; thus, the furnace has a permanent, not a perpetual, place in the cellar since the cellar itself will ultimately crumble away; perpetual, rather than permanent, motion is considered impossible because of the inevitable interference of friction{a dark, a colorless, a tasteless, a perfumeless, as well as a shapeless world: the leaden landscape of a perpetual winter— Mumford
}{the song of the minstrel moved through a perpetual Maytime— J. R. Green
}{a perpetual embargo was the annihilation, and not the regulation of commerce— John Marshall
}Analogous words: enduring, abiding, persisting or persistent, continuing (see corresponding verbs at CONTINUE): *everlasting, endless, unceasing: *continual, continuous, incessant, unremitting, perennial: eternal, sempiternal (see INFINITE)Antonyms: fleetingContrasted words: fugitive, passing, evanescent, transitory, *transient, short-lived
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
