the farthest reach of time: unending future duration (forever, everlasting) or, less often, the distant past (of old); perpetuity.
This Aramaic word points to the vanishing point of time, the horizon beyond which the eye of memory or expectation cannot see. Depending on the sentence it looks in one of two directions: backward to "ancient times, long ago," or forward to "forever, without end." One word does the work of both because the underlying idea is the same, the outer edge of time rather than any fixed number of years.
In the Aramaic chapters of Daniel and Ezra the forward-looking sense dominates, and it carries real weight. Human empires rise and fall, but God's rule is described again and again as an "everlasting" kingdom and dominion, one that will "stand forever" while the statue of the kingdoms is shattered. The doubled expression "forever and ever" (literally "from the far past to the far future") stretches the word to its limit to praise a God whose reign has no bookend on either side.
The most frequent single use is the polite greeting to the king, "O king, live forever." It is a courtly wish, a formal way of saying "long may you reign," not a claim that the ruler is actually immortal, and the same hyperbole survives in English coronation shouts.
This is the exact Aramaic counterpart of the Hebrew עוֹלָם, the word behind nearly every "forever" and "of old" in the rest of the Old Testament, and it lines up closely with the Greek αἰών, "age, eternity."