annual

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Recurring, done, or performed every year; yearly: an annual medical examination.
2. adj. Of, relating to, or determined by a year: an annual income.
3. adj. Botany Living or growing for only one year or season.
4. n. A periodical published yearly; a yearbook.
5. n. Botany A plant that completes its entire life cycle in a single growing season.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Of, for, or pertaining to a year; yearly: as, the annual growth of a tree; annual profits; the annual motion of the earth.
2. Relating to a year, or to the events or transactions of a year: as, an annual report.
3. Lasting or continuing only one year, or one season of the year; coming to an end individually within the year: as, annual plants or insects.
4. Occurring or returning once a year; happening or coming at yearly intervals: as, an annual feast or celebration.
5. n. A mass said for a deceased person, either daily during a year from the day of his death, or on the recurrence of the day for a number of years; an anniversary mass; also the fee paid for it. Also called annal.
6. n. A yearly payment or allowance; specifically, in Scotland, quit-rent; ground-rent. Also called ground-annual.
7. n. A plant or an animal whose natural term of life is one year or one season; especially, any plant which grows from seed, blooms, perfects its fruit, and dies in the course of the same year. Annuals, however, may be carried over two or more years by preventing them from fruiting, as is frequently done with the mignonette. Many species that are perennials in warm climates are only annuals where the winters are severe. Winter annuals, frequent in warm regions with dry summers, germinate from the seed under the rains of autumn, grow through the winter, and die after perfecting seed in the spring.
8. n. A literary production published annually; especially, an illustrated work issued near Christmas of each year. The name is more especially applied to certain publications handsomely bound, illustrated with plates, and containing prose tales, poems, etc., which were formerly very popular, but are now no longer issued. The first one published in London appeared in 1822, and the last in 1856.
9. n. Plants become annuals because of the limitations of the seasons. Some plants die outright at the approach of cold or dry weather and leave only their seeds to carry the species over to another season; these are the true annuals. Others, truly perennial in their native climates, become annual in short-season climates by being killed by frost; these are plur-annuals. Others carry themselves over by means of bulbs; these are pseud-annuals.

Wiktionary

1. adj. Happening once every year.
2. adj. Of, for, or relating to a whole year, often as a recurring cycle; determined or reckoned by the year; accumulating in the course of a year; performed, executed, or completed over the course of a year. See also circannual.
3. adj. botany (of a plant) Having a life cycle that is completed in only one growing season; e.g. beans, corn, marigold. See Annual plant in Wikipedia. Compare biennial, perennial.
4. adj. entomology Living or lasting just one season or year, as certain insects or insect colonies.
5. n. An annual publication; a book, periodical, journal, report, comic book, yearbook, etc., which is published serially once a year, which may or may not be in addition to regular weekly or monthly publication.
6. n. botany An annual plant; a plant with a life span of just one growing season; a plant which naturally germinates, flowers and dies in one year. Compare biennial, perennial.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Of or pertaining to a year; returning every year; coming or happening once in the year; yearly.
2. adj. Performed or accomplished in a year; reckoned by the year.
3. adj. Lasting or continuing only one year or one growing season; requiring to be renewed every year
4. n. A thing happening or returning yearly; esp. a literary work published once a year.
5. n. Anything, especially a plant, that lasts but one year or season; an annual plant.
6. n. (R. C. Ch.) A Mass for a deceased person or for some special object, said daily for a year or on the anniversary day.

WordNet 3.0

1. adj. completing its life cycle within a year
2. n. (botany) a plant that completes its entire life cycle within the space of a year
3. n. a reference book that is published regularly once every year
4. adj. occurring or payable every year