Evanescent Meaning and Usage

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Meaning:

Adjective.

- vanishing or likely to vanish like vapor.
- quickly fading away; ephemeral or transitory
- tending to become imperceptible; scarcely perceptible.
"evanescent beauty"

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Derivatives:

evanescently - adverb
evanescence - noun

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Synonyms:
impermanent, temporary, ephemeral, fleeting, fugacious, momentary, passing, short-lived, temporal, transient, transitory.

Antonyms:
permanent, unlimited, abundant

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Use evanescent in a sentence:

1. The evanescent mirage could only be seen at a certain angle.

2. "Money leads such an evanescent existence in my pocket, I shall never be wealthy."

3. "The sight of Anna’s evanescent breath in the chilly air made Mike’s heart race a little faster yet."

4. You don't realize how evanescent youth really is until you are older.

5. There is nothing more glorious than the evanescent beauty of a sunset.

6. “All was unstable; quivering as leaves, evanescent as lightning.”

7. There was something evanescent about Sam, she thought, something shifting and false.

8. An evanescent ring surrounded the moon as it rose. It was there for a moment, and then it disappeared.

9. As a valetudinarian, James spent a lot of time supine on the couch when he could have been enjoying the evanescent pleasures of life while they lasted.

10. A face floated into his mind…into his memory. A face he had not seen since his last year at Hogwarts…a face that disappeared from his life…a face that haunted him in his dreams and memories. She was an evanescent memory, but he could still see and hear her like it was only yesterday.

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Do you know?

"Evanescent" derives from the Latin verb "evanescere," which means "to evaporate" or "to vanish."

English has several other words that mean lasting or staying only a short time.

"Ephemeral" and "transitory" apply to what is bound to pass ("superstardom is transitory"); "ephemeral," especially, implies striking brevity of duration ("fads, by their very nature, are ephemeral").

"Fugitive" and "fleeting" imply passing so quickly as to make apprehending difficult ("a fugitive smile flitted across his face"; "caught a fleeting glimpse").

"Fugacious," is used of all things fleeting and transitory; it's also the least common of these synonyms.

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Some more examples:

1. The evanescent mist soon began to dissipate from the heat of the sun.

2. The evanescent smoke from the cannon’s muzzle vanished within minutes.

3. The subject of the poem is the evanescent nature of young love.

4. He had thought he loved her to distraction; he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor little evanescent partiality.

5. Every tornado is a little different, and they are all capricious, evanescent and hard to get a fix on.

6. The accidentally famous. . . may write books, appear on talk shows, and, in so doing, attract even greater public attention. This type of celebrity status, of course, is brittle and evanescent.

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Mnemonic:

Evanescent sounds like "Vanishing Scent"; the scent that would vanish, that wouldn't stay for long.
So evanescent means vanishing..

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