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DURABLE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Existing for a long time
Example:
a long-lasting friendship
Synonyms:
durable; lasting; long-lasting; long-lived
Classified under:
Similar:
long (primarily temporal sense; being or indicating a relatively great or greater than average duration or passage of time or a duration as specified)
Derivation:
durability (permanence by virtue of the power to resist stress or force)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Very long lasting
Example:
the perdurable granite of the ancient Appalachian spine of the continent
Synonyms:
durable; indestructible; perdurable; undestroyable
Classified under:
Similar:
imperishable (not perishable)
Derivation:
durability (permanence by virtue of the power to resist stress or force)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Capable of withstanding wear and tear and decay
Example:
durable denim jeans
Synonyms:
durable; long-wearing
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
serviceable (ready for service or able to give long service)
Derivation:
durability (permanence by virtue of the power to resist stress or force)
Context examples:
A durable power of attorney for health care is a document that names your health care proxy.
(Advance Directives, NIH: National Cancer Institute)
Also called durable power of attorney.
(DPA, NCI Dictionary)
Self-assembling durable silica spheres that fit inside each other.
(Nanosphere, NCI Thesaurus)
A durable power of attorney remains in effect until the person who grants it dies or cancels it.
(Durable power of attorney, NCI Dictionary)
Stanford University researchers have developed an affordable, durable battery that could harness this so-called blue energy.
(Researchers develop technology to harness energy from mixing of freshwater and seawater, National Science Foundation)
It could also lead to the creation of more durable, lightweight materials for the aerospace industry.
(Discovery may lead to osteoporosis treatment, National Science Foundation)
Scientists hope such vaccine candidates will induce broader and more durable protection against influenza than current vaccines.
(New study reveals a novel indicator of influenza immunity, National Institutes of Health)
He had suffered, and he had learned to think: two advantages that he had never known before; and the self-reproach arising from the deplorable event in Wimpole Street, to which he felt himself accessory by all the dangerous intimacy of his unjustifiable theatre, made an impression on his mind which, at the age of six-and-twenty, with no want of sense or good companions, was durable in its happy effects.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
And though the consequent shock and alarm was very great and much more durable—indeed I believe it was half an hour before any of us were comfortable again—yet that was too general a sensation for any thing of peculiar anxiety to be observable.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
