Emily Dickinson Lexicon

DU-RA'TION, n.

1. Continuance in time; length or extension of existence, indefinitely; as, the duration of life; the duration of a partnership; the duration of any given period of time; everlasting duration. This holding on or continuance of time is divided by us arbitrarily into certain portions as minutes, hours and days; or it is measured by a succession of events, as by the diurnal and annual revolutions of the earth, or any other succession; and the interval between two events is called a part of duration. This interval may be of any indefinite length, a minute or a century.
2. Power of continuance. – Rogers.