Library / English Dictionary

PERSEVERE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Be persistent, refuse to stop

Example:

The child persisted and kept asking questions

Synonyms:

hang in; hang on; hold on; persevere; persist

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "persevere" is one way to...):

bear on; carry on; continue; preserve; uphold (keep or maintain in unaltered condition; cause to remain or last)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "persevere"):

obstinate (persist stubbornly)

ask for it; ask for trouble (persist with actions or an attitude despite the probability that it will cause trouble)

plug; plug away (persist in working hard)

follow; stick to; stick with (keep to)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s
Something is ----ing PP

Derivation:

perseverance; perseveration (the act of persisting or persevering; continuing or repeating behavior)

perseveration (the tendency for a memory or idea to persist or recur without any apparent stimulus for it)

Credits

 Context examples: 

But Mr. Fowler being a persevering man, as a good seaman should be, blockaded the house, and having met you succeeded by certain arguments, metallic or otherwise, in convincing you that your interests were the same as his.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Had his choice been less unexceptionable, I should have condemned his persevering.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

What right had he to endeavour to please, as he certainly did—to distinguish any one young woman with persevering attention, as he certainly did—while he really belonged to another?

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

How can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man, persevere in this exile?

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

But for his having been so patient and persevering for so long a time, we never could have hoped to do anything worth speaking of.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Miss Bingley, however, was incapable of disappointing Mr. Darcy in anything, and persevered therefore in requiring an explanation of his two motives.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

She could remember dozens who had persevered in every possible vice, going on from crime to crime, murdering whomsoever they chose, without any feeling of humanity or remorse; till a violent death or a religious retirement closed their black career.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I have heard, said he, with great compassion, of the injustice your friend Mr. Ferrars has suffered from his family; for if I understand the matter right, he has been entirely cast off by them for persevering in his engagement with a very deserving young woman.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

In the tractability with which, at my wish, you forsook a study in which you were interested, and adopted another because it interested me; in the untiring assiduity with which you have since persevered in it—in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties—I acknowledge the complement of the qualities I seek.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Crawford's is no common attachment; he perseveres, with the hope of creating that regard which had not been created before.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)