perpetuate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to enable or allow the continuation of into the future; keep alive (used most often in reference to something considered harmful or false): Vines obscured a plaque intended to perpetuate her memory.
Social media played a significant role in perpetuating political divisions.
Vines obscured a plaque intended to perpetuate her memory.
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to preserve from extinction or oblivion: perpetuate the species.
to perpetuate one's name;
perpetuate the species.
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of perpetuate
First recorded in 1520–30; from Latin perpetuātus (past participle of perpetuāre, derivative of perpetuus “uninterrupted”); see perpetual, -ate 1
Explanation
Some things should last forever and others should not be perpetuated at all. Things that should NOT be perpetuated? Ugly rumors, arms races, and your Aunt Martha's annual fruit cake. Be careful not to confuse perpetuate with perpetrate. Although they differ in spelling by only one letter, they differ greatly in meaning. If you perpetuate something, you help it last. Perpetrate, on the other hand, means to commit a criminal act. Needless to say, you wouldn't want to perpetuate the acts of perpetrators!
Vocabulary lists containing perpetuate
25 Words from "Baseball and Black History"
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Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865)
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100 SAT words Beginning with "P"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
AI applications pose unaddressed privacy risks and perpetuate healthcare bias when patients upload medical data to chatbots, potentially exposing personal information to insurance decisions while reflecting cultural disparities embedded in training data.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 26, 2026
Springsteen takes up the story and adds a moment where a man seeking what he believes is retribution against his friends decides to take another path instead and not perpetuate the cycle of violence.
From Salon • Feb. 10, 2026
“If this data has been absconded or downloaded, you could perpetuate fraud against every single government system in existence much more easily than at any time in our history.”
From MarketWatch • Feb. 4, 2026
Nonetheless, they have plans to cut through the fog to perpetuate expansion and boost returns.
From Barron's • Feb. 3, 2026
Why would these young men openly endorse and perpetuate the very stereotypes that are invoked to justify their second-class status, their exclusion from mainstream society?
From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
