perpetuate pərˌpɛtʃəˈweɪt verb
: cause to continue or prevail
The word perpetuate has appeared in 108 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on April 13 in “A Cautionary Tale of 408 Tentacles” by Emily Anthes. The article tells about Dr. Cameron Clifford, a dentist whose story of acquiring an octopus that happened to be pregnant with 50 babies went “superviral” on TikTok:
In his posts, Dr. Clifford tried to be clear about the difficulties of octopus ownership: the costs, the lack of sleep and the serious water damage to his home, which required major renovations. “I did not want to perpetuate or romanticize keeping a baby octopus,” he told me.
Despite those efforts, he was overwhelmed with requests to adopt a hatchling.
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word perpetuate in a sentence?
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