Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Enduring forever; eternal. See Synonyms at infinite.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Eternal; everlasting; endless; having no end.
Wiktionary
- adj. Seemingly everlasting or eternal.
- adj. philosophy everlasting, that is having infinite temporal duration; as opposed to eternal, outside time and thus lacking temporal duration
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of neverending duration; everlasting; endless; having beginning, but no end.
- adj. Without beginning or end; eternal.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. having no known beginning and presumably no end
Etymologies
- From Medieval Latin sempiternālis, from Latin sempiternus, a contraction of semperæternus, from semper ("always") + æternus ("eternal"). Possibly via French sempiternel. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French sempiternel, from Late Latin sempiternālis, from Latin sempiternus : semper, always; see sem-1 in Indo-European roots + aeternus, eternal; see aiw- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Although the colonists were expected to enjoy a sempiternal spring, the lack of seasons only reminded them that their world was artificial.”
365 tomorrows » Kathy Kachelries : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day
“Meanwhile the Underground festers and dies at the weekend, as sempiternal and glacially-proceeding 'engineering works' bring it to its umpteenth year of standstill”
“You can only be eaten by hungry sharks for so long; but Speaker Pelosi's sempiternal.”
“[Is truth eternal, or both eternal and sempiternal?], Nowe Tory,”
“His writings have also the sempiternal youth of poetry.”
“My town sometimes smelled bad; it smelled like sharp chemical releases because it was under the plumes of many smokestacks, and there were weird sempiternal creaks, grindings, and groans that issued from the nearby factories.”
Simon & Schuster: I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen
“Compliance with EU guidelines looks like being a sempiternal difficulty for Microsoft; the company needs to ensure the upcoming Vista operating system, with its wide range of functions, doesn't break antitrust law.”
“Nevertheless it may be said that the sempiternal is not bounded by time (in a weaker sense than Plato ascribes to the Forms) in that what exists sempiternally cannot age.”
“She would change her breakfasts, she thought — have a lemonade and a tomato sandwich instead of the sempiternal bacon and eggs and toast.”
“Her answer was that the rape was committed in the dortour, where she durst not cry because it was a place of sempiternal silence.”
Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sempiternal’.
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phrontistery-s
from phrontistery.info
syzygy, systyle, systematology, systatic, syssitia, syrtic, systaltic, syrt, syrinx, syphilomania, syphilology, syntrierarch and 1593 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Words that are Spelled Unfairly
Tympaniform, splenomegaly, zuccaciyecioglu, U-n-f-a-i-r-l-y, siliqyiform, sarcophagous, glycyrrhizin, koinonia, isarithm, caoutchouc, sempiternal
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alpha omega αώ terms
two words that say it all and contrast/complement one another
startling end, az wy, az wye, round trip, circle around, tune gap, begin end, collect lection, lectio lectitandos, dash all, together alone, go-slow stopwatch and 64 more...
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Potpourri
eponymous, aa, pulchritude, gizmo, macabre, sui generis, solecism, solipsism, eldritch, samizdat, queue, obsequious and 469 more...
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All The Words
I enjoy collecting words, for I have no fear of them ever running out.
tatterdemalion, panopticon, idioglossia, hypnagogue, hypnopomp, defenestration, anacoluthon, scofflaw, affront, edifying, palimpsest, naufrage and 475 more...
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apjoseph's words
insurmountable, ubiquitous, unequivocal, incumbent, asinine, amenable, sycophants, precarious, malevolent, gregarious, raison detra, nefarious and 200 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
bumwank, calamity, recalcitrant, gayenese, jeeze, nonsense, flabbergasted, juxtapose, procrastinating, ossanity, biffing, loser and 1972 more... -
Vega's Logophile Dictionary
Words I've heard/read in use, words being learnt, words that I want to eventually use in everyday language, words that are high-brow and elitist and scholarly and obscure, words that display the wo...
parsimonious, torpor, recalcitrant, plebeian, vitriol, gumption, augur, aestival, celerity, diaphanous, farrago, nonpareil and 287 more...
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The Troublesome Offspring Of Cardinal...
Words and names discovered or re-discovered while reading and re-reading this awesome book.
LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES, the Navantes, the Cusicuari, the Kogi, the Acahuatecs, Mount Aconcagua, Hoy, miedo, escandalice, puede, hablar, ingenio and 328 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
grabbable, retuiteando, leaving, fantastic, absolutely, kurwa, hella, ridic, underpass, hate, interlude, plush and 2369 more... -
collection
sanguine, vie, antebellum, glacial, treacly, iconoclast, lissom, anathema, serendipity, parsimonious, histrionic, contemptuous and 279 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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junemoonchild's Favorite Words
Aubrey, astrology, Cancer, Taurus, dybbuk, enchantress, love, mystery, mysteriarch, spirit, melancholy, disintegration and 129 more...
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wordhoard
dilatory, ataraxia, hermit, cabana, hut, dome, vestigial, porcine, crapulous, usufruct, curmudgeon, bombastic and 229 more...
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Pale Fire
rubicund, buttonhole, stillicide, preterist, curio, iridule, lemniscate, cherubic, portico, vestry, rodstein, sectile and 107 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sempiternal.
bilby Used in the Same Context
Juvenal · agelong · arab-israeli · birds' · ever-widening · fast-gathering · flowerlike Apr 3, 2011
chained_bear Not from the U.S. Marine Corps? Aug 14, 2008
super-logos Semper means "always." This is a word I have heard in Christian prayers. Aug 14, 2008
brtom "Empty of everything, in a hum of sempiternal readiness for that soul-wilting, muse-recoiling Jawohl, Herr Kommandant! to shoot up one’s spinal column as quick as a blastula ..." from John Latta's Isola di Rifiuti Aug 3, 2007
palooka dateless: having no known beginning and presumably no end. per wordnet. Mar 20, 2007