Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Enduring forever; eternal.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Eternal; everlasting; endless; having no end.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of neverending duration; everlasting; endless; having beginning, but no end.
  • adjective Without beginning or end; eternal.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Seemingly everlasting or eternal.
  • adjective philosophy everlasting, that is having infinite temporal duration; as opposed to eternal, outside time and thus lacking temporal duration

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having no known beginning and presumably no end

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French sempiternel, from Late Latin sempiternālis, from Latin sempiternus : semper, always; see sem- in Indo-European roots + aeternus, eternal; see aiw- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Medieval Latin sempiternālis, from Latin sempiternus, a contraction of semperæternus, from semper ("always") + æternus ("eternal"). Possibly via French sempiternel.

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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 2010

  • You can only be eaten by hungry sharks for so long; but Speaker Pelosi's sempiternal.

    Dar Kush Steven Barnes 2010

  • Meanwhile the Underground festers and dies at the weekend, as sempiternal and glacially-proceeding 'engineering works' bring it to its umpteenth year of standstill

    Tony Blair: The Next Labour Prime Minister? 2010

  • Although the colonists were expected to enjoy a sempiternal spring, the lack of seasons only reminded them that their world was artificial.

    365 tomorrows » 2008 » January : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2008

  • [Is truth eternal, or both eternal and sempiternal?], Nowe Tory,

    Stanisław Leśniewski Simons, Peter 2007

  • 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.

    I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen Amy Wilentz 2006

  • 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.

    Microsoft Meets Kroes' Deadline 2006

  • 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.

    Eternity Helm, Paul 2006

  • His writings have also the sempiternal youth of poetry.

    Representative Men 2006

  • 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.

    I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen Amy Wilentz 2006

Comments

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  • dateless: having no known beginning and presumably no end. per wordnet.

    March 20, 2007

  • "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

    August 3, 2007

  • Semper means "always." This is a word I have heard in Christian prayers.

    August 14, 2008

  • Not from the U.S. Marine Corps?

    August 14, 2008

  • Used in the Same Context

    Juvenal · agelong · arab-israeli · birds' · ever-widening · fast-gathering · flowerlike

    April 4, 2011