the.com/eternal flame

means A fire kept continuously burning, often by mechanical means or dedicated upkeep, as a monument to a person, cause, or memory.

from The practice is ancient — fires tended perpetually by priests or guardians appear in Greek, Roman, Persian, and Indian ritual, often honoring gods or civic identity (the Vestal fire in Rome being the famous case). The modern memorial version — gas-fed, switch-lit, needing no actual tending — is largely a 19th-20th century invention, with war memorials and graves like JFK's popularizing the phrase 'eternal flame' in everyday speech. So the words carry old sacred weight, but the thing itself is often just a well-engineered gas jet.