eternal: [14] Something that is eternal lasts literally for ‘aeons’. The word comes via Old French eternal from aeternālis, a late Latin development of the Latin adjective aeternus ‘eternal’. This in turn was a derivative of aevum ‘age’ (which crops up in English medieval, primeval, etc), a relative of Greek aión ‘age’ (from which English gets aeon) and archaic English aye ‘ever’. => aeon, aye, ever
