Word.ws English Dictionary

evergreening

evergreening noun: the practice of slightly altering a drug to extend patent protections. Also the present participle and gerund of evergreen.

Noun

evergreening (uncountable)

  1. The practice of slightly altering a drug to extend patent protections.
  2. The practice of repeatedly refinancing the debt of an unprofitable company so as to postpone the day of its default (to some indefinite future time), which in many cases may render it a zombie company.
    • The basic story is that after 1990, the Japanese economy slowed down, and lots of companies that used to be profitable — especially in the construction, retail, and trading sectors — were no longer profitable. These companies owed a lot of money to banks. If they stopped being able to pay back...2026 June 15, Noah Smith, “Will China, Inc. be zombified? A question surprisingly few people are asking”, in Noahopinion [Substack newsletter], archived from the original on 15 Jun 2026

Also used as

evergreening is also the present participle and gerund of evergreen.

Questions about evergreening

What does evergreening mean?
Evergreening means the practice of slightly altering a drug to extend patent protections.
What part of speech is evergreening?
Evergreening is a noun.

Words near evergreening in the dictionary

  1. Evergreen State
  2. evergreen wood fern
  3. evergreen wood ferns
  4. evergreened
  5. evergreenery
  6. evergreening
  7. evergreenness
  8. evergreens
  9. evergrowing
  10. Everhart
  11. Everhart-Thornley detector

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: evergreening (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “evergreening.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/evergreening. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.