The phrase "abiding impression" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a lasting or long-standing impression that someone or something has made on someone else. Example: "The speaker's passionate words left an abiding impression on the audience, who were still talking about it days later."
And there's an abiding impression that Chekhov is somber stuff.
But the abiding impression is of dazzling clarity.
That for me was probably the abiding impression from last night.
But the abiding impression left by a CITES meeting is that no one knows how best to protect beleaguered wildlife.
My abiding impression, though, was of a woman warily weighing up whether success would be worth the sacrifice of privacy.
The abiding impression is of amateurish goodwill, embarrassment, lots of bunting and in the absence of displays of public emotion an instinctive recourse to oceans of alcohol.
Mike Butcher: So it's probably hard to summarize, but what was some of your abiding impressions?
The abiding overall impression from that year was of a player who had consistently battled to put himself into all these positions, whatever the outcome, and a man who treated negativity as so much wasted energy.
ReprintsIt all adds up to an abiding, albeit unfair, impression of an army that has lost both its discipline and its sense of purpose.
The traveling retrospective "William Kentridge: Five Themes," which opened at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday, illustrates the process repeatedly, as well as Mr. Kentridge's abiding interest in acoustic impressions of all kinds.
However, the effect is the same: ordinary law-abiding people are left with the impression that they have to bear the cost of rebuilding society alone, while the rich shirk their responsibilities.
