perennial

/pəˈrɛniəl/

/pəˈrɛniəl/

Other forms: perennials

Perennial typically describes things that are permanent, constant, or repeated. If you fight with your parents every year over whether they really must invite your annoying cousins for Thanksgiving, you could call that a perennial conflict.

Arguing with your roommate about who cleaned the bathroom last time might be a perennial argument. There is also a perennial plant, which lasts more than two years and usually reappears each spring, because it produces flowers and seeds from the same root structure. Perennial comes from the Latin perennis, from the prefix per-, "through," plus annus, or "year." Annus is also the source of our English word annual — an annual plant lives only one year or season.

Definitions of perennial

1. adjective

   lasting an indefinitely long time; suggesting self-renewal
   “perennial happiness”

   synonyms:

   long

   primarily temporal sense; being or indicating a relatively great or greater than average duration or passage of time or a duration as specified
2. adjective

   recurring again and again
   “perennial efforts to stipulate the requirements”

   synonyms: recurrent, repeated

   continual

   occurring without interruption; chiefly restricted to what recurs regularly or frequently in a prolonged and closely spaced series
3. adjective

   lasting three seasons or more
   “the common buttercup is a popular perennial plant”

   antonyms:

   annual

   completing its life cycle within a year

   biennial

   having a life cycle lasting two seasons
4. noun

   (botany) a plant lasting for three seasons or more
   types:

   Eryngium yuccifolium, button snakeroot, rattlesnake master, rattlesnake's master

   coarse prickly perennial eryngo of United States thought to cure rattlesnake bite

   type of:

   flora, plant, plant life

   (botany) a living organism lacking the power of locomotion