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''inveterate'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260125204041-00-⌔

inveterate - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

inveterate (comparative more inveterate, superlative most inveterate)

  • Firmly established from having been around for a long time; of long standing.
    • ✤ Synonym: long-standing
    • ✤ Hypernym: everlasting
    • ✤ Antonyms: transient, temporary, momentary, fleeting; impermanent, shifting; acute; novel
    • ✤ Near-synonyms: deep-rooted, ingrained, ineradicable, indelible, radicated, chronic, permanent
    • ✤ an inveterate disease
    • ✤ an inveterate habit
    • ✤ a Heaven’s radiance of justice, prophetic, clearly of Heaven, discernible behind all these confused worldwide entanglements, of Landlord interests, Manufacturing interests, Tory-Whig interests, and who knows what other interests, expediencies, vested interests, established possessions, inveterate Dilettantisms, Midas-eared Mammonism.1
    • ✤ In Montpelier, where this prison stands, the inveterate prejudice against prisoners has been swept away.2
  • (of a person) Having had a habit (usually a bad habit) for a long time.
    • ✤ Antonyms: casual, sometime, occasional, dilettante
    • ✤ Coordinate terms: established; devoted
    • ✤ Near-synonyms: hardened, chronic, dyed-in-the-wool
    • ✤ an inveterate idler; an inveterate gambler; an inveterate smoker
    • ✤ an inveterate traveller
    • ✤ “Say no more,” interrupted Henrietta: “the very mention of that inveterate gossip accounts for every thing. Do let me, my dear Mrs. Courtenaye,” and she took her hand with a kindness that was irresistible, “let me warn you against allowing your happiness to be the sport of a woman like that;…3
    • ✤ [S]he offered kisses to a stranger so confidingly that the most inveterate bachelor relented.4
    • ✤ Like many lonely people, he was an inveterate hoarder, making and surrounding himself with objects, barriers against the demands of human intimacy.5
  • Malignant; virulent; spiteful.
    • ✤ A man of mild manners can form no idea of inveterate revenge or cruelty […]6
    • ✤ This his lordship perused with a countenance, and scrutiny, apparently inveterate.7

Verb

inveterate (third-person singular simple present inveterates, present participle inveterating, simple past and past participle inveterated)

  • (obsolete) To fix and settle after a long time; to entrench.
    • ✤ “the vulgar conceived that now there was an end given, and a consummation to superstitious prophecies, the belief of fools, but the talk sometimes of wise men, and to an ancient tacit expectation which had by tradition been infused and inveterated into men’s minds.”8
    • ✤ “none of these Princes do use to maintaine any armies together, which are annex’d and inveterated with the governments of the provinces, as were the armies of the Roman Empire.”9
    • ✤ “The foregoing elements of disunion are inveterated by the constituent formation of our national legislature. In the French chambers the members are all Frenchmen; but our members of Congress are effectively Georgians, New-Yorkers, Carolinians, Pennsylvanians, &c.”10

Etymology

The adjective is first attested in 1528, the verb in 1574; borrowed from Latin inveterātus (“of long standing, chronic”), perfect passive participle of inveterō and participial adjective (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from in- (“in, into”) + veterō (“to age”), from vetus, veteris (“old”). Cognate with Italian inveterato, French invétéré. By surface analysis, in- (“not, opposite”) +‎ veterate.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation, General American, Canada) IPA: /ɪnˈvɛtəɹɪt/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • (Australian) IPA: /ɪnˈvetəɹɪt/
  • Rhymes: -ɛtəɹɪt
  • Hyphenation: in‧vet‧er‧ate

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. 3, Manchester Insurrection”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book I (Proem): ↩

  2. 1911, Morrison I. Swift, “Humanizing the Prisons,”, in The Atlantic: ↩

  3. 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, pages 100–101: ↩

  4. 1868–1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, “chapter 45”, in Little Women: […],, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC: ↩

  5. 2017, Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, New York: Picador, →ISBN, page 6: ↩

  6. 1748, David Hume, Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of morals, London: Oxford University Press, published 1973, § 15: ↩

  7. 1765–70, Henry Brooke, The Fool of Quality; or, The History of Henry, Earl of Moreland ↩

  8. 1622, Francis Bacon, The History of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh: ↩

  9. 1640, Edward Dacres, translation of The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, Chapter XIX [1]: ↩

  10. 1851 January, author unknown, “The Philosophy of the American Union, in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, page 16: ↩

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