persistence
/pəˈsɪst(ə)ns/noun
persistence is spelled P-E-R-S-I-S-T-E-N-C-E: 11 letters and 3 syllables. It appears 3.2 times per million words in written English, the 14,731st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, persistence means “The property of being persistent” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of persistence is persistences.
How many letters and syllables are in persistence?
| Letters | 11: P-E-R-S-I-S-T-E-N-C-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 3.2 times per million words; the 14,731st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How common is persistence?
Persistence appears 3.2 times per million words in written English, the 14,731st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce persistence?
- UK /pəˈsɪst(ə)ns/
Persistence has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-persistence.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of persistence
- persistences plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does persistence mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The property of being persistent.
You've got to admire her persistence. She's asked him out every day for a month even though she keeps turning him down.
- 2
Of data, the property of continuing to exist after the termination of the program.
Once written to a disk file, the data has persistence: it will still be there tomorrow when we run the next program.
- 3
Continuation of the previous day's weather (particularly temperature and precipitation statistics).
- 4
The number of times an operation can be iteratively applied to a number before it reaches a permanently constant state.
The persistence of the number 39 under the operation of multiplying the digits of the number is three, because 3x9 = 27, 2x7 = 14, and 1x4 = 4, and no further iterations will change the number again.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Persistence in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense property of being persistent:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | persistance |
| German | Ausdauer, Bestand, Beständigkeit |
| Portuguese | persistência |
| Spanish | persistencia, perseverancia |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does persistence come from?
From Middle French persistance, from persistant, from Latin persistēns, from persistō. By surface analysis, persist + -ence.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).