fugacious

fu•ga•cious (fyoo-GEY-shuhs)  adj

Definition:
1. lasting a short time; evanescent; fleeting; transitory
2. withering, fading or dropping off early (botany)

fugaciousness, fugacity noun;  fugaciously adverb

Origin:
1634; from L. fugaci, stem of fugax "apt to flee, timid," figuratively "transitory, fleeting," from fugere "to flee" from PIE base *bheug- "to flee" + -ous

Related:
Synonyms: transitory, brief, ephemeral, evanescent, fleeting, impermanent, momentary, passing, short-lived, temporal, temporary, transient
Related Words: fugitive, centrifugal, refuge, subterfuge

Sentence Examples:
• It is superior to all its congeners in the brilliancy of its colour, nor are its blossoms so fugacious as many of the other species. - The Botanical Magazine, William Curtis

• Nothing in the world is without import: what women spend for their toilet, the resistance that men make from day to day to the temptations of the commonest pleasures, the new and petty needs that insinuate themselves unconsciously into the habits of all; the reading, the conversations, the impressions, even the most fugacious that pass in our spirit--all these things, little and innumerable, that no historian registers, have contributed to produce this revolution, that war, this catastrophe, that political overturn, which men wonder at and study as a prodigy. - Characters and events of Roman History, Guglielmo Ferrero

• As sensibility returned, and before he had opened his eyes, he uttered a sentence about the fugacious nature of consciousness, from which he passed to a discussion of the singular relations between the soul and the body.  - About London, J. Ewing Ritchie

Sources: Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, Free Dictionary, Online Etymology

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