persisting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of persist.

   Despite repeated repairs, the fault was persisting across the entire network.

   Persisting through every rejection, she finally landed an interview.

   Note

   A participle that usually stands without an object, because persist is almost always intransitive: a fault keeps persisting, a candidate goes on persisting through rejection. The rarer transitive use, meaning "to make permanent," does let it take a direct object. When the form names the act itself and can be counted, it has become the noun meaning persistence, which has its own plural.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or quality of continuing firmly in a course of action despite difficulty or opposition.

   Their persisting through years of setbacks eventually produced a working prototype.

   The committee admired her persisting in the face of constant rejection.

   Similarpersistence, perseverance, tenacity, determination

   Note

   Persistence names a quality, but this noun can name separate acts of persisting, so it takes a plural. Robert Aitken, in The teaching of the types (1854), writes of "our persistings in the attempt to do for ourselves" what cannot be done. The thing persisted in follows "in." When you mean the quality in general, persistence does the same work without the sense of repeated acts.

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