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Perdure

Posted: Sun May 15, 2011 12:52 pm
by Slava
The word of the day from the 12th:

• perdure •


Pronunciation: per-jurHear it!

Part of Speech: Verb, intransitive (No direct objects)

Meaning: To endure permanently, to last or continue indefinitely.

Notes: Today's word is a member of a large and active family, unrelated to perjure, though it sounds a bit like it (different accent placement). That family contains two nouns, perdurance and perduration. It also contains two adjectives meaning "permanent, interminable": perdurant with its noun perdurance and perdurable. Perdurable has an adverb, perdurably, and a noun, perdurability.

In Play: Perdure is to endure for an exceptionally long time: "The city ordinance prohibiting kissing in buggies has perdured well beyond its useful life." This sense makes it particularly applicable to the Middle East, whose known history runs very deep: "Few have expectations for a perdurable peace in the Middle East; the current state of belligerence has perdured too long."

Word History: Today's Good Word starts out with a preposition that we discussed yesterday, per and ends with the root of durare "to last", a root that goes back to PIE duro- "long (time)". It appears in words like durable, during, duration, and others. If you know Latin, you are probably wondering if there is a connection with Latin durus "hard". A slim possibility looms in the fact that the durus comes from the same root as Russian derevo and Serbian drevo "wood, tree", some of which endure a long time and have wood that is notably hard. (It would be hard not to offer perdurable thanks to Lew Jury for suggesting today's staunch member of the English vocabulary.)

Re: PERDURE

Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2023 8:04 am
by Slava
Ancient history with this one, but I will say I'm not so comfortable with the pronunciation. I keep the 'd' as a 'd', not a 'j'.

That being said, to use it, I'll go for, 'the manure of Washington perdures.'