Eternity is time without any end at all. For all eternity, an eternity of waiting, the question of eternity.
It is a religious and philosophical word first: eternity is not merely a very long time but time without beginning or end, or existence outside time altogether. In ordinary speech it is an exaggeration for a wait — it took an eternity, which usually means about twenty minutes. Note eternal, the adjective, and the phrase for all eternity, which appears in vows and gravestones and very little in between.
1nouneternityTime without any end.
“The whole argument turns on what eternity actually means.”
2nounperiodA period that feels far too long.
“The dentist's drill seemed to go on for an eternity.”
eternity is endless time.
Latin aeternitas comes from aevum, an age — the same root as age, ever and never. Eternity was named as an unending age rather than as the absence of time, which is a subtly different idea from the theological one.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ey-
Latin
aeternitās
Old French
eternité
Middle English
eternyte
English, today
eternity
From Middle English eternyte, from Old French eternité, from Latin aeternitās. Displaced native ēcnes.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Time & Calendar