Word of the Day

Thursday February 25, 2010

evanescent [ev-uh-NES-unt]

adjective

Liable to vanish or pass away like vapor; fleeting; vanishing.

Do you feel you haven't fully realized an experience until you've written it? Yes, I think I do. At the same time, when I write, it turns into a different experience. So that's a little scary: There's the experience you're having which is fleeting and evanescent, and then there's the one you write, which is set down after time, and neither one is really true.

Dinah Lenney, "BOOK REVIEW; She knits little pearls of wisdom; Inspired and unplugged in her Northwest attic, Brenda Miller crafts essays that aim for a meeting of the minds", Los Angeles Times, Jan 31, 2010
At his peak, in the 1550s, Bronzino was the most influential painter in Florence. And although his reputation went into eclipse, it never went away. By the 20th century he was back. In Henry James's 1902 "Wings of the Dove" a Bronzino portrait of a noblewoman, "with her long neck, her recorded jewels, her brocaded and wasted reds," is the culminating symbol of evanescent magnificence around which that deeply mannered novel turns.

Holland Cotter, "A Line Both Spirited and Firm", New York Times, Jan 22, 2010
Observing above, that the glowworm does not emit light after the 14th of July, I mean thereby that clear, steady light, which has rendered this creature so remarkable to all persons; for I have repeatedly noticed, deep in the herbage, a faint evanescent light proceeding from these creatures, even as late as August and September.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Vol. 13, No.361 (1829)

Origin of the Word

Evanescent, approximately 1717, derives from Latin evanescens, present participle of evanescere "disappear, vanish," from ex- "out" + vanescere "vanish."