eternal

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eternal sleep

A euphemism for death. Even though she had been sick for months, we were all devastated when our grandmother entered her eternal sleep.
See also: eternal, sleep

eternal life

Everlasting life, often thought of as life that extends into the afterlife. While we all will miss Stu's presence here on Earth, he will now enjoy eternal life in heaven.
See also: eternal, life

eternal triangle

A sexual encounter or relationship between three people. Although exciting at first, the eternal triangle caused their relationship to suffer and ultimately end.
See also: eternal, triangle

the Eternal City

Rome, Italy. The celebrated singer is traveling to the Eternal City for a performance at the Vatican for the Pope himself!
See also: city, eternal

hope springs eternal

People can always find a reason to hope, even in the bleakest situations. The phrase is a shortening of the line "Hope springs eternal in every human breast," from Alexander Pope's poem Essay on Man. We don't know how this business venture will work out, but hope springs eternal, right?
See also: eternal, hope, spring

hope springs eternal in the human breast

People can always find a reason to hope, even in the bleakest situations. The phrase comes from Alexander Pope's poem Essay on Man. We don't know how this business venture will work out, but hope springs eternal in the human breast, right?
See also: breast, eternal, hope, human, spring

eternal life

Euph. life after death. He passed on into eternal life, leaving us behind to mourn. She is now at rest in eternal life.
See also: eternal, life

(the) eternal triangle

a sexual or emotional relationship involving two women and one man or two men and one woman. (*Typically, a couple [man and woman] and another man or woman.) Henry can't choose between his wife and his mistress. It's the eternal triangle. I'm surprised Jane doesn't get tired of the eternal triangle. She goes out with Peter at the weekend and Jim during the week.
See also: eternal, triangle

Hope springs eternal (in the human breast).

Prov. People will continue to hope even though they have evidence that things cannot possibly turn out the way they want. (From Alexander Pope's poem, "Essay on Man." Sometimes used to remark that you believe someone's situation is hopeless, as in the first example.) Jill: The boss may have turned me down the first twelve times I asked for a raise, but this time I really think she'll give it to me. Jane: Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Alan: You're not still trying to teach the dog to shake hands! Jane: Hope springs eternal.
See also: eternal, hope, spring

eternal triangle

A relationship involving three lovers, such as two women involved with one man or two men with one woman. For example, The plot of the murder mystery revolved around the eternal triangle of a husband, wife, and another woman . [c. 1900]
See also: eternal, triangle

hope springs eternal

People will keep on hoping, no matter what the odds. For example, I keep buying lottery tickets-hope springs eternal. This expression was coined by Alexander Pope ( An Essay on Man, 1732) and quickly became proverbial.
See also: eternal, hope, spring

the Eternal City

a name for the city of Rome.
See also: city, eternal

eternal triangle

a relationship between three people, typically a couple and the lover of one of them, involving sexual rivalry.
See also: eternal, triangle

hope springs eternal

it is human nature always to find fresh cause for optimism.
This is a shortened version of Alexander Pope's line in An Essay on Man ( 1733 ): ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’.
1992 Angela Lambert A Rather English Marriage Hope springs eternal—she smiled wryly—even in Tunbridge Wells .
See also: eternal, hope, spring

ˌhope springs eˈternal

(saying) human beings never stop hoping: She’s sure that he’ll come back to her one day. I’m not so sure, but hope springs eternal.This comes from An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope: ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’.
See also: eternal, hope, spring

the eternal checkout

n. death. Hank knew the eternal checkout was just around the corner, and he suddenly got religion.
See also: checkout, eternal
References in periodicals archive ?
Thus, contingents possess within themselves a temporal beginning as well as a perpetual eternality (al-hud[u.
Mir Damad in India: Islamic philosophical traditions and the problem of creation
What makes this structure seem natural and inevitable to so many women is not only its eternality, but also its pervasiveness, mutatis mutandis, across disciplines and cultures.
"A rank usurpation of power" - the role of patriarchal religion and culture in the subordination of women
Although critics such as Kurtz may lament this amplification of Suso's imagery, the eternality of our own imago makes Image an exceptionally powerful interlocutor in Hoccleve's uniquely moving dialogue.
'Your ensaumple and your mirour': hoccleve's amplification of the imagery and intimacy of Henry Suso's Ars Moriendi
Chapters discuss "The Autobiography of God" as it were (including such concepts as the omnipotence, omniscience, and eternality of God), "The Works of God", "The Creation of Mankind", "The Fall of Mankind", "The Redemption of Mankind", God's connection to Israel, the theology of the prophets, the theology of the psalms, and much more.
Everlasting Dominion
The theorization of time from the point of view of physics, because it is interested in the eternality of universals and logical necessity, casts the now sub specie aeternitatis, as fixed and true in its logical relations of earlier-than and later-than.
Modernism's news
The incarnation, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, eternality, and immutability all fit in the sketch and are found in the Christmas child.
The Case for Christmas
6) Notice that this interpretation goes some considerable way toward explaining Aristotle's acceptance of the eternality of the species.
Aristotle, science and the plenitude of being
One can hear timeless whispers of eternality fleeting or floating around the perfect stillness of the moon suggesting the immeasurable immensity, immediacy, and intimacy of nature, and, at the same time, the unutterable motion, mood, and moment of silence, life, and drama.
The humanizing voice and vision of place in jazz and Daoism
Hannele momentarily gloats over her willing role as teasing betrayer of his manhood; however god-like he may appear to her in his inscrutable eternality, she exultantly notes how he suffers from the day's exertion: "His eyes were black and set, he seemed so motionless, as if he were eternal facing these upper facts.
Courage at the border-line: Balder, Hemingway, and Lawrence's The Captain's Doll
Does Arnold mean that God, as "The Eternal alone" is "alone" in His eternality or does he mean that God is eternally alone, that He is not only distant but aloof and isolated and, perhaps, even lonely in His solitariness?
"The tide's pendulum truth": a reading of the poetry of theological crisis from Matthew Arnold to R. S. Thomas
Such gaps can never be closed with appeals to eternality so long as the starting point is particularity.
The pure machine's gambit: Walter Benjamin's Thesis I
The difficulty is then to explain how eternality can emerge from within a world, and how this eternality then communicates between worlds: 'I believe in eternal truths and in their fragmented creation in the present of worlds.
Had we but worlds enough, and time, this absolute, philosopher ..
More crucially, Bogart's Marlowe, and all he has come to mean to contemporary, viewers, offers the lingering memory of Chandler's rendering buried within a rock-solid embodiment, providing the near unbearable pleasure of a half-remembered vulnerability concealed behind the visual assurance of solidity, permanence, eternality.
"Nothing you can't fix": screening Marlowe's masculinity
Together, the two draw a circle, a symbol of perfection and the eternality of their love.
T/K : The passion of John Donne
Benjamin's most mystifying assertions about prophecy and the "messianic" were made within a still romantic framework before he turned his attention to demystifying the most extravagantly logocentric romantic claims for the power of the symbol to reconcile God's creative word with human language, and therefore to bridge the gaps between the letter and the spirit, history and eternality, the mind and the material world, the knowing subject and the object of knowledge.
The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy
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