Word.ws English Dictionary

self-perpetuating

self-perpetuating adjective: causing itself to continue to exist.

Adjective

self-perpetuating (comparative more self-perpetuating, superlative most self-perpetuating)

  1. Causing itself to continue to exist.
    • The committee was self-perpetuating: all it did was hold a meeting to decide when the next meeting was, and consume funds to do so.
    • It's a self-perpetuating error, now that we've made it, we can't fix it without breaking things that depend on it.

Forms of self-perpetuating

comparativemore self-perpetuating
superlativemost self-perpetuating

Origin of self-perpetuating

From self- + perpetuating.

Questions about self-perpetuating

What does self-perpetuating mean?
Self-perpetuating means causing itself to continue to exist.
What part of speech is self-perpetuating?
Self-perpetuating is an adjective.

Words near self-perpetuating in the dictionary

  1. self-perceptions
  2. self-perfect
  3. self-perfected
  4. self-perfecting
  5. self-perfects
  6. self-perpetuating
  7. self-perpetuation
  8. self-perpetuations
  9. self-persuasion
  10. self-pity
  11. self-pitying

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: self-perpetuating (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: “self-perpetuating.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/self-perpetuating. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.