Well it is partly for this reason that I asked for any “more aesthetically pleasing” ways to translate the same sort of concept I’m trying to present. 
I thought that it was seen as a good translation by Robin Parry to mean “of the age to come” (speaking of Matt 25). Kind of similar to the idea of a “Cambrian rock”- a rock of the Cambrian era, a punishment of the messianic age.
Matthew 25:46 And these [the ones who did not feed the hungry, give water the thirsty, visit those in prison, etc.] will go away into κολασις αιωνιον.
The word “κολασις” was originally used in reference to the pruning of plants to correct their growth. Later it was used figuratively with reference to correction of people.
Now if “αιωνιος” (in this instance “αιωνιον”, the accusative case, object of the preposition “into”) meant “everlasting”, then the people mentioned would go into “everlasting correction”. Now, how can correction be everlasting? If it were everlasting, these people would never be corrected. But if the word were translated “lasting” as it should be, it makes perfect sense. They go into lasting correction for as long as it takes for their correction to be accomplished.
If it can’t, then neither can “everlasting”, as in most translations.
Why the word “aiōnios” does not mean “eternal”
The Greek noun “kolasis” (found in Matthew 25:46) is derived from the verb “kolazō” which originally meant “to prune” as in pruning trees. Trees are often pruned in order to correct their growth, and so the verb as well as the noun began to be applied to any kind of correction.
Let’s look at how Matthew 25:46 reads when we translate “aiōnios” at “eternal”:
And these (the goats) will go away into eternal correction, but the righteous into eternal life."
How can correction be eternal? Would the correction ever be accomplished? If not, it would not be correction. If it were accomplished, it would not be eternal.
*Mark 3:29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"—
*
How can a sin be eternal?
Luke 16:9 "And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they will receive you into the eternal dwellings.
If this means eternal dwellings in heaven, then this verse implies that you can buy your way there.
Titus 1:2 in hope of eternal life which God, who never lies, promised before eternal times.
How can there be a period of time before eternal times? “Before eternal times” is the literal translation if the Greek word “aiōnios” means “eternal”.
Philemon 1:15 Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back eternally.
How could Philemon have his slave back eternally? Would the slave continue to serve him forever in the next life?
*Jude 1:7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. *
Did Sodom and Gomorrah undergo punishment in eternal fire? Didn’t that fire go out ages ago?
In secular Greek literature, the word “aiōnios” meant “lasting” or “enduring”. In the first century before Christ, Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian, wrote:
Was the stone naturally eternal?
Flavius Josephus in Wars of the Jews, wrote:
Was Jonathan condemned to eternal imprisonment? It is said that his imprisonment was for a period of three years.
The Greek adjective “aiōnios” is derived from the Greek noun “aiōn”, which means “age”.
Chystostum (A.D. 347-407) understood “aiōnios” as meaning lasting for an age. Here is what he wrote:
Homily of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians, Homily IV)
I agree. I received an email from him this morning saying a cheaper paperback version is in the pipeline and that he would look into the possibility of a Kindle version (that I requested) 
He is also writing me a summary of his reasons for thinking “aionios” isn’t everlasting…
Not being that good with languages, this whole area is a weakness when I try to explain EU 
Personally I’m confident that the definition isn’t everlasting, it’s just explaining that to others!
I found this in J.W. Hanson’s book on Universalism in the early church. Please forgive that it’s so long but I feel it’s worth it:
Origin of Endless Punishment.
When our Lord spoke, the doctrine of unending torment was believed by many of those who listened to his words, and they stated it in terms and employed others, entirely differently, in describing the duration of punishment, from the terms afterward used by those who taught universal salvation and annihilation, and so gave to the terms in question the sense of unlimited duration.
For example, the Pharisees, according to Josephus, regarded the penalty of sin as torment without end, and they stated the doctrine in unambiguous terms. They called it eirgmos aidios (eternal imprisonment) and timorion adialeipton (endless torment), while our Lord called the punishment of sin aionion kolasin (age-long chastisement).
Meaning of Scriptural Terms.
The language of Josephus is used by the profane Greeks, but is never found in the New Testament connected with punishment. Josephus, writing in Greek to Jews, frequently employs the word that our Lord used to define the duration of punishment (aionios), but he applies it to things that had ended or that will end.1 Can it be doubted that our Lord placed his ban on the doctrine that the Jews had derived from the heathen by never using their terms describing it, and that he taught a limited punishment by employing words to define it that only meant limited duration in contemporaneous literature? Josephus used the word aionos with its current meaning of limited duration. He applies it to the imprisonment of John the Tyrant; to Herod’s reputation; to the glory acquired by soldiers; to the fame of an army as a “happy life and aionian glory.” He used the words as do the Scriptures to denote limited duration, but when he would describe endless duration he uses different terms. Of the doctrine of the Pharisees he says:
“They believe * * * that wicked spirits are to be kept in an eternal imprisonment (eirgmon aidion). The Pharisees say all souls are incorruptible, but while those of good men are removed into other bodies those of bad men are subject to eternal punishment” (aidios timoria). Elsewhere he says that the Essenes, “allot to bad souls a dark, tempestuous place, full of never-ceasing torment (timoria adialeipton), where they suffer a deathless torment” (athanaton timorion). Aidion and athanaton are his favorite terms for duration, and timoria (torment) for punishment.
Philo’s Use of the Words.
Philo, who was contemporary with Christ, generally used aidion to denote endless, and aionian temporary duration. He uses the exact phraseology of Matt. xxv: 46, precisely as Christ used it: “It is better not to promise than not to give prompt assistance, for no blame follows in the former case, but in the latter there is dissatisfaction from the weaker class, and a deep hatred and æonian punishment (chastisement) from such as are more powerful.” Here we have the precise terms employed by our Lord, which show that aionian did not mean endless but did mean limited duration in the time of Christ. Philo adopts athanaton, ateleuteton or aidion to denote endless, and aionian temporary duration. In one place occurs this sentence concerning the wicked: "to live always dying, and to undergo, as it were, an immortal and interminable death."2 Stephens, in his valuable “Thesaurus,” quotes from a Jewish work: “These they called aionios, hearing that they had performed the sacred rites for three entire generations.” 3 This shows conclusively that the expression “three generations” was then one full equivalent of aionian. Now, these eminent scholars were Jews who wrote in Greek, and who certainly knew the meaning of the words they employed, and they give to the aeonian words the sense of indefinite duration, to be determined in any case by the scope of the subject. Had our Lord intended to inculcate the doctrine of the Pharisees, he would have used the terms by which they described it. But his word defining the duration of punishment was aionian, while their words are aidion, adialeipton, and athanaton. Instead of saying with Philo and Josephus, thanaton athanaton, deathless or immortal death; eirgmon aidion, eternal imprisonment; aidion timorion, eternal torment; and thanaton ateleuteton, interminable death, he used aionion kolasin, an adjective in universal use for limited duration, and a noun denoting suffering issuing in amendment. The word by which our Lord describes punishment is the word kolasin, which is thus defined: “Chastisement, punishment.” “The trimming of the luxuriant branches of a tree or vine to improve it and make it fruitful.” “The act of clipping or pruning–restriction, restraint, reproof, check, chastisement.” “The kind of punishment which tends to the improvement of the criminal is what the Greek philosopher called kolasis or chastisement.” “Pruning, checking, punishment, chastisement, correction.” “Do we want to know what was uppermost in the minds of those who formed the word for punishment? The Latin poena or punio, to punish, the root pu in Sanscrit, which means to cleanse, to purify, tells us that the Latin derivation was originally formed, not to express mere striking or torture, but cleansing. correcting, delivering from the stain of sin.” 4 That it had this meaning in Greek usage, see Plato: "For the natural or accidental evils of others no one gets angry, or admonishes, or teaches, or punishes (kolazei) them, but we pity those afflicted with such misfortune * * * for if, O Socrates, if you will consider what is the design of punishing (kolazein) the wicked, this of itself will show you that men think virtue something that may be acquired; for no one punishes (kolazei) the wicked,
looking to the past only simply for the wrong he has done–that is, no one does this thing who does not act like a wild beast; desiring only revenge, without thought. Hence, he who seeks to punish (kolazein) with reason does not punish for the sake of the past wrong deed, * * * but for the sake of the future, that neither the man himself who is punished may do wrong again, nor any other who has seen him chastised. And he who entertains this thought must believe that virtue may be taught, and he punishes (kolazei) for the purpose of deterring from wickedness?" 5
Use of Gehenna.
So of the place of punishment (gehenna) the Jews at the time of Christ never understood it to denote endless punishment. The reader of Farrar’s “Mercy and Judgment,” and “Eternal Hope,” and Windet’s “De Vita functorum statu,” will find any number of statements from the Talmudic and other Jewish authorities, affirming in the most explicit language that Gehenna was understood by the people to whom our Lord addressed the word as a place or condition of temporary duration. They employed such terms as these "The wicked shall be judged in Gehenna until the righteous say concerning them, ‘We have seen enough.’"5 “Gehenna is nothing but a day in which the impious will be burned.” “After the last judgment Gehenna exists no longer.” "There will hereafter be no Gehenna."6 These quotations might be multiplied indefinitely to demonstrate that the Jews to whom our Lord spoke regarded Gehenna as of limited duration, as did the Christian Fathers. Origen in his reply to Celsus (VI, xxv) gives an exposition of Gehenna, explaining its usage in his day. He says it is an analogue of the well-known valley of the Son of Hinnom, and signifies the fire of purification. Now observe: Christ carefully avoided the words in which his auditors expressed endless punishment (aidios, timoria and adialeiptos), and used terms they did not use with that meaning (aionios kolasis), and employed the term which by universal consent among the Jews has no such meaning (Gehenna); and as his immediate followers and the earliest of the Fathers pursued exactly the same course, is it not demonstrated that they intended to be understood as he was understood?7
Professor Plumptre in a letter concerning Canon Farrar’s sermons, says: “There were two words which the Evangelists might have used–kolasis, timoria. Of these, the first carries with it, by the definition of the greatest of Greek ethical writers, the idea of a reformatory process, (Aristotle, Rhet. I, x, 10-17). It is inflicted ‘for the sake of him who suffers it.’ The second, on the other hand, describes a penalty purely vindictive or retributive. St. Matthew chose–if we believe that our Lord spoke Greek, he himself chose–the former word, and not the latter.”
All the evidence conclusively shows that the terms defining punishment–“everlasting,” “eternal,” “Gehenna,” etc., in the Scriptures teach its limited duration, and were so regarded by sacred and profane authors, and that those outside of the Bible who taught unending torment always employed other words than those used by or Lord and his disciples.
Professor Allen concedes that the great prominence given to “hell-fire” in Christian preaching is a modern innovation. He says: “There is more ‘blood-theology’ and ‘hell-fire,’ that is, the vivid setting-forth of everlasting torment to terrify the soul, in one sermon of Jonathan Edwards, or one harangue at a modern ‘revival,’ than can be found in the whole body of homilies and epistles through all the dark ages put together. * * * Set beside more modern dispensations the Catholic position of this period (middle ages) is surprisingly merciful and mild.”