perpetuity

From Middle English perpetuitee, perpetuite, perpetuyte, from Old French perpetüité, ultimately from Latin perpetuitās.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌpɜː(ɹ)pɪˈtjuːɪti/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌpɝpəˈtuːɪti/

perpetuity (countable and uncountable, plural perpetuities)

1. (uncountable) The quality or state of being perpetual; endless duration; uninterrupted existence.
   • 1951 April, “Notes and News: North Fife Line, Scotland”, in Railway Magazine, number 600, page 281:

     Mr. Waller adds that when the railway was authorised in 1897, one of the clauses of the Act authorising the transfer of the line to the North British Railway provided that that company should work it in perpetuity, and it was this clause that caused the interim interdict to be granted.

   • 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page i:

     The gnomic belief that the world is conditioned by love is no idle apothegm. Love, as the instrument of creative agencies and cosmic perpetuity, is no banausic conception.

2. (countable) Something that is perpetual.
3. (countable, law) A limitation intended to be unalterable and of indefinite duration; a disposition of property which attempts to make it inalienable beyond certain limits fixed or conceived as being fixed by the general law.
4. (countable, finance) An annuity in which the periodic payments begin on a fixed date and continue indefinitely.

• (quality or state of being perpetual): endlessness, eternity; see also Thesaurus:endlessness or Thesaurus:eternity

• in perpetuity

• perpetuity on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Perpetuity in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “perpetuity”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “perpetuity”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.