Perennial
Etymology
From Latin perennis, "lasting through the year," from per, "through," and annus, "year." It began as a literal botanical term: a perennial plant is one that lives through more than one growing season, unlike an annual. From that horticultural sense it broadened to anything that persists or recurs indefinitely.
adjective · /puh-REN-ee-uhl/
Lasting or recurring year after year, seemingly without end.
What it names
The word for something that keeps coming back or never quite goes away — a perennial debate, a perennial favorite — as reliably as a plant that returns each spring.
Example
Office coffee quality was a perennial complaint, resurfacing at every meeting no matter how many machines they bought.
Related idea
Perpetual means genuinely continuous and unbroken; perennial allows for gaps, describing what keeps returning season after season rather than what never stops.
noun · /puh-REN-ee-uhl/
A plant that lives for more than two years, dying back and regrowing season after season.
What it names
a gardener’s category — flowers and herbs that return each year, as opposed to annuals
Example
She filled the border with perennials so it would come back every spring.
Related idea
The plant embodies the adjective: it recurs endlessly, the botanical opposite of the transient annual that lives one season and is gone.