All 10 Uses of
persist
in
The American Language, by Mencken
- They persist, not as the normal expressions of a race, ...but through prestige and precedent and the will and habit of a dominating class largely out of touch with a national fabric unconsciously taking form out of school.†
persist = continue
- The variance persists to this day.†
*persists = continues
- I have even heard /feeled/ as the preterite of /to feel/, as in "I /feeled/ my way," though here /felt/ still persists.†
- Sometimes the simple form of the verb persists through all tenses.†
- One of the last to go was /wrote/, which persisted until near the end of the century.†
persisted = continued
- In the common speech, however, the /i/-sound persisted, and down to the time of [Pg236] the Civil War it was constantly heard in such words as /boil/, /hoist/, /oil/, /join/, /poison/ and /roil/, which thus became /bile/, /hist/, /ile/, /jine/, /pisen/ and /rile/.†
- But in certain other words, perhaps supported by Irish influence, the /i/-sound still persists.†
persists = continues
- [81] Various similar misplaced vowels were brought from England by the colonists and have persisted in America, while dying out of good England usage†
persisted = continued
- England has gone back to the broad /a/, but in America the flat /a/ persists, and many Americans who use /sassy/ every day would scarcely recognize /saucy/ if they heard it.†
persists = continues
- [32] It died out over there during the eighteenth century, and today the great majority of Englishmen bear such simple given names as /John/, /Charles/ and /William/—often four or five of them—but in America it has persisted†
persisted = continued
Definition:
to continue -- often despite difficulty or to repeat a question