fugacious
adjUK, US /fjuːˈɡeɪ.ʃəs/
Etymology Borrowed from Latin fugācius (whence -acious), comparative of fugāciter (“evasively, fleetingly”), from fugāx (“transitory, fleeting”), from fugiō (“to flee”).
1
Fleeting, fading quickly, transient.
- Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes.1906 April, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “The Furnished Room”, in The Four Million, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co, →OCLC:
- Watering of the eye, conjunctival congestion, distinct catarrhal conjunctivitis, and deep-seated scleral congestions, sometimes fugacious, and often accompanied by intense headache […]1916, George Edmund De Schweinitz, Diseases of the Eye, page 589:
2 more examples
- "[…1916, James Branch Cabell, The Certain Hour:
- It may be that Redford's fugacious nature is not so mysterious, that it is studded in the artwork of the labs and the very stones of Sundance.2011, Michael Feeney Callan, Robert Redford: The Biography, Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page xvii:
- Derived terms
- fugaciously, fugaciousness