perennial
adjective
Did you know?
When you hear perennial, you probably think of peonies rather than pines. The word today typically describes (or, as a noun, refers to) plants that die back seasonally but produce new growth in the spring. But this wasn’t the word’s initial meaning: originally, perennial was equivalent to evergreen, used, as that word is, for plants that remain with us all year. We took this "throughout the year" sense straight from the Romans, whose Latin word perennis combined per- ("throughout") with a form of annus ("year"). The poet Ovid, writing around the beginning of the first millennium, used the Latin word to refer to a "perennial spring" (a water source), and the scholar Pliny used it of birds that don't migrate. Perennial retains these same uses today, for streams and occasionally for birds, but the word has long since branched out to encompass several other senses, including "constant" (as in "a perennial bestseller") and "recurring" (as in "the perennial joy of reading Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day").
Examples of perennial in a Sentence
Michael Kinsley, Time, 29 Oct. 2001
The issue between science and art is of perennial interest to me, since I started off in science in college, in medicine, was headed for psychiatry, and ended up writing novels …
—Walker Percy, "The State Of The Novel," 1977,
in Signposts in a Strange Land, 1991
… scientists are warning that a perennial viral threat, the upcoming flu season, could be far more dangerous than usual—more evidence that these tiny foes are responsible for a large share of human suffering.
—Claudia Wallis, Time, 3 Nov. 1986
This variety of oregano is perennial.
Flooding is a perennial problem for people living by the river.
Soo Kim, MSNBC Newsweek, 23 June 2025
In ornamental beds, install cardboard rings under the mulch around perennial or annual plants to stop weeds from intruding.
—Lauren Landers, Better Homes & Gardens, 23 June 2025
This can be done by hand-pulling, hoeing, or digging out a perennial weed with a garden knife.
—Mary Marlowe Leverette, Southern Living, 22 June 2025
There is a perennial thread running through this representative sampling of recent failures: The rising complexity of modern applications requires a shift in mindset to resilience as a first-order goal.
—Spencer Kimball, Forbes.com, 20 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for perennial
Cite this Entry
“Perennial.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perennial. Accessed 3 Jul. 2025.
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perennial
adjective
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