Definition of "chronic"

Peer group support is important to displaced homemakers. The Displaced Homemakers' Network has done excellent work in helping women see that their problems do not have to be chronic.

1980, Ruth Harriet Jacobs, Integrating Displaced Homemakers into the Economy, page 14

It was a casual sneer, obviously one of a long line. There was hatred behind it, but of a quiet, chronic type, nothing new or unduly virulent, and he was taken aback by the flicker of amazed incredulity that passed over the younger man's ravaged face.

1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 8, in The China Governess‎

Chronic mismanagement in the dugout and in the boardroom has meant the scale of the job now is as big as it has ever been.

2018 May 4, Tom English, “Steven Gerrard: A 'seriously clever or recklessly stupid' Rangers appointment”, in BBC Sport‎

Pimp had been kicking it with one of the young jawns hanging around the apartment. She was real young and had bumpy skin and slum rings on every finger. She told us she was living next door with her grandmother while her mother was in jail, and she took us up to the roof to smoke some chronic.

2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World/Ballantine Books, page 103

Wernersvill asylum is now practically filled, and, as it is peopled with able-bodied chronics, there will be but little annual movement of patients.

1895, Report of the Committee on Lunacy to the Board of Public Charities of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, page 9

And then there were the chronics, not only those with marked pathology but life-long sufferers from "indigestion" or migraine, who had been passed around from doctor to doctor with nothing but temporary relief.

2001, Elizabeth Wright, A Brief Study Course in Homoeopathy, page 79

Of fifty-five boys scoring four or more, fifteen were chronic offenders (out of twenty-three chronics altogether) […]

2003, Philip Bean, Crime: Critical Concepts in Sociology, page 376

Most congregations are full of wonderful people, but these chronics are also present in many churches. They come in three varieties -- the chronic havers of personal problems, the chronic complainers, and the chronic workaholics.

2003, Lawrence W. Farris, Ten Commandments for Pastors New to a Congregation, page 59

An Italian study (Francescato et al. 1979), which compared 137 women who had had more than one abortion with others who had aborted only once, revealed that the use of contraceptives was higher among the 'chronics', and that the contraceptives they employed were generally safer.

2006, Eva Pattis Zoja, Abortion: Loss and Renewal in the Search for Identity, page 18