enduring
Americanadjective
-
lasting; permanent.
a poet of enduring greatness.
-
patient; long-suffering.
adjective
-
permanent; lasting
-
having forbearance; long-suffering
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of enduring
Explanation
Many people have an enduring love for ice cream, that is, they have loved it for a long time and will continue to love it into the future. Enduring means long-lasting. Enduring has roots that go back about 1,500 years to the Late Latin period. It is quite an enduring word! The original root meant hard, so your enduring friendship or your enduring interest in sports is solid enough to stand the test of time. Besides meaning long-lasting, enduring sometimes means long-suffering as when someone has an enduring disposition, but this meaning is found in the verb more than in the adjective.
Vocabulary lists containing enduring
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Beowulf vocabulary
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Franklin Roosevelt, "Four Freedoms" (1941)
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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.
With no resolution in sight, how has this enduring trade war affected Canada and the US, and what could come next?
From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2026
Critic W. David Marx, looking to sum up the curiously stagnant opening decades of the 21st century, cribbed a phrase from one of its enduring icons for the title of his book “Blank Space.”
From Salon ● Aug. 29, 2026
Harris-Dawson disputes that, saying Raman failed to lead the committee with the urgency needed to combat L.A.’s enduring homelessness crisis.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2026
The 1997 image of the 12-year-old prince walking stony-faced and head bowed behind his mother's coffin earned enduring global sympathy.
From Barron's ● Aug. 23, 2026
Sometimes there are real, live, enduring controversies in science.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
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.
