persistern.

1611 J. Florio Queen Anna's New World of Words Insistore, an insister, a persister.

1646 W. Stafford Reason of War 134 The Arguing and Debating..to be imputed wholly to the Authors and Persisters in this War.

1747 S. Richardson Clarissa II. viii. 40 Each of them tends to the exclusion of that ungenerous persister's visits.

1766 F. Blackburne Confessional Pref. p. v The persisters, indeed, are but few; and no wonder.

1877 M. Arnold tr. G. Sand in Fortn. Rev. June 776 It [sc. detachment from idolatry] is no loss of the religious sense, as the persisters in idolatry maintain.

1982 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 30 May iii. 2/3 Persistence is highly valued in most companies, and most of them honour their persisters by deifying them.

1998 Jrnl. Peace Res. 35 535/2 In this article, we focus on what we learned about sustained commitment from the 20 persisters.

1944 J. W. Bigger in Lancet 14 Oct. 498/1 These abnormal cocci have been termed ‘persisters’, to denote their power of surviving in the presence of sufficient penicillin to be lethal for the normal forms.

1977 Lancet 15 Oct. 822/2 Electron microscopy was the only technique to demonstrate successfully the presence of small numbers of bacterial persisters in the vegetations of this treated case of streptococcal endocarditis.

2003 Jrnl. Appl. Microbiol. 95 1261 The fraction of persisters increased with decreasing growth rate when cultures were prepared in continuous culture.