Meaning & use
ever-present
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Meaning
adjectivecomparable
Always there, never absent, and never going away.
Grammar: Hyphenated before a noun, and can also follow be: the danger was ever-present.
Patterns
- an ever-present danger
- ever-present in something
Fear was an ever-present part of life during the war.
The ever-present hum of traffic never stopped in the city.
She was an ever-present figure at her son's games.
Common combinations
- ever-present danger
- Wildfire is an ever-present danger in the hills.
- ever-present threat
- Flooding remained an ever-present threat.
- ever-present reminder
- The scar was an ever-present reminder of the accident.
- ever-present smile
- His ever-present smile put visitors at ease.
- ever-present worry
- Money was an ever-present worry for the family.
Synonyms and how they differ
- constant
- Constant stresses that something never stops or changes, while ever-present stresses always being there.
- omnipresent
- Omnipresent suggests being everywhere at once, which is broader and more formal than ever-present.
- perpetual
- Perpetual suggests going on without end, and often describes a process or state.
- persistent
- Persistent implies something continues despite effort to stop it, which ever-present does not require.
Opposites
Word family
- present adjective
- existing in a place or at a time
- presence noun
- the state of being in a place
- omnipresent adjective
- present everywhere
- ever adverb
- at all times
Commonly confused: ever-present or ever-present vs. everlasting?
ever-present vs ever-present vs. everlasting
Everlasting means continuing forever in time, while ever-present means always there at any given moment.
Practice
For the sailors, the risk of storms was an ___ part of life at sea.
Choose one answer.
Ever-present means always there. Once-off and long-gone suggest the risk was rare or ended, and half-hearted does not describe a risk.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “ever-present”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.