a. [f. YEAR + LONG a. Cf. OE. ʓéarlanges adv. for a year, MHG. jârlanc, (G. jahrelang), ON. árlangt (as adv.)] Of the length of a year; lasting for a year, or throughout the year; often, lasting for years in succession, (sometimes) age-long.
1813. Coleridge, Lett., to T. Poole (1895), 612. The year-long difference [viz. Feb., 1812–13] between me and Wordsworth.
1847. Tennyson, Princess, VII. 319. Thee … From year-long poring on thy pictured eyes, Ere seen I loved.
1868. Morris, Earthly Par. (1870), I. I. 16. No Greenland winter waits us there, No year-long night.
1886. A. Weir, Hist. Basis Mod. Europe (1889), 44. Her legislative assembly … did good service to her fame at the time, but the year-long farce soon lost its plausibility.
1886. W. Wallace, in Encycl. Brit., XXI. 453/1. The yearlong alliance between philosophy and theology.
b. hyperbolically. Seeming as long as a year.
1871. Palgrave, Lyr. Poems, 92. Through year-long hours of hope and woe She sits and waits.
So Years-long a. (rare–1), lasting for several or many years.
1887. Hardy, Woodlanders, I. xiii. 235. The years-long regard that she had had for him.
