Permanent means lasting forever, or meant to. A permanent job, permanent damage, nothing is permanent.
In practice it usually means indefinite rather than eternal: a permanent contract is one with no end date. The contrast is with temporary, and permanent employee, permanent address and permanent resident are all common fixed phrases. Note permanently, the adverb; permanence, the noun; and that in American English a perm — a permanent wave — is the hair treatment, which is the same word promising rather more than it delivers.
1adjectivepermanentLasting forever, or meant to.
“The damage to the wall is permanent.”
2adjectivefixedWith no fixed end, of a job or arrangement.
“The post was made permanent after eighteen months.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
permanent is a quality of lasting.
Latin permanens is per-, through, plus manere, to remain — remaining throughout. Remain, mansion and manor come from the same verb, all of them about staying put.
Proto-Indo-European
*men- (stay)
Middle English
permanent
Middle French
permanent
English, today
permanent
Built from
Borrowed from Middle French permanent. From Middle English permanent, permanente, from Middle French permanent, from Latin permanēns, from permaneō (“to stay through”). 15th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA