Definition of "lasting"
lasting
adjective
comparative more lasting, superlative most lasting
Persisting for an extended period of time.
Quotations
hasty wroth, and heedlesse hazardryDoe breede repentaunce late, and lasting infamy.
1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, page 249
Then his son bought a carven coffin hewn from a great log of fragrant wood which is used to bury the dead in and for nothing else because that wood is as lasting as iron, and more lasting than human bones, and Wang Lung was comforted.
1931, Pearl S. Buck, chapter 34, in The Good Earth, New York: Modern Library, published 1944, page 311
Though they obviously realized that these episodes were part of something wonderful and important and lasting, the writers and producers couldn’t have imagined that 20 years later “Treehouse Of Horror” wouldn’t just survive; it’d thrive as one of the most talked-about and watched episodes of every season of The Simpsons.
2012 April 29, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Treehouse of Horror III” (season 4, episode 5; originally aired 10/29/1992)”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)
(obsolete) Persisting forever.
Quotations
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,And from the organ-pipe of frailty singsHis soul and body to their lasting rest.
c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene vii]
Things that are first must give place, but things that are last, are lasting.
1678, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That which is to Come: […], London: […] Nath[aniel] Ponder […]; reprinted in The Pilgrim’s Progress (The Noel Douglas Replicas), London: Noel Douglas, […], 1928, page 24
noun
countable and uncountable, plural lastings
(obsolete) The action or state of persisting; the time during which something or someone persists.
Quotations
But all things that haue beginning, must come to an end, and whatsoeuer groweth, must likewise deminish, being subiect to corruption and change, according to the time appointed vnto it by the course of Nature, as is seene by experience in plants, and in wights, which haue their ages and lastings certaine and determined.
1598, I. D. (possibly John Dee) (translator), Aristotles Politiques, or Discourses of Gouernment, London: Adam Islip, Chapter 12, p. 334
[…] it may be some kinde of Prophecy, of the continuance, and lasting of these Letters, that having been scattered, more then Sibyls leaves, I cannot say into parts, but corners of the World, they have recollected and united themselves […]
1651, John Donne, Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, London: Richard Marriot, dedicatory epistle