Evanescent   (pronounced ev-uh-nes-unt) adjective


Definition

tending to vanish quickly like vapor; fading from sight or existence; quickly disappearing.


Other Forms

Evanesce   (pronounced ev-uh-nes) verb

Evanescence   (pronounced ev-uh-nes-ns) noun

Main Example

  • President Bush continues to ride high in the polls. But as political commentators keep reminding us, popularity can be evanescent, as the senior President Bush discovered in 1991-92 when his record high popularity after the Gulf War vanished amid a recessionary economy.

    Workplace Examples

  • One of the defining traits of articulate people, as I keep hammering into my workshop audiences, is their use of synonyms when emphasizing a point. Unlike written communication, which is relatively permanent, the spoken word is evanescent--it fades away quickly! Because synonyms work like a boxer's left hook followed by a right hook, they help make a speaker's message indelible.

  • Sure, the new VP's speech was pretty rousing, but some of the goals she outlined are, in my judgment, a little grandiose--they are not doable. Mark my words, within just a few months we will see the evanescence of several items on her agenda.

    Other Examples

  • your commenting: "I sure hope we get that big order from Target. It's just what we need to get our salesforce's pessimism to start evanescing."

  • of all the assets at one's disposal, time perhaps being the one that is the most valuable as well as the most uncontrollable and evanescent

  • politicians' campaign promises that are sometimes so unrealistic they evanesce soon after the candidates have been elected to office

  • while discussing Beethoven's genius, famous symphony orchestra conductor John Eliot Gardiner saying that "the composer had a unique ability to translate, with great eloquence, the deepest of human emotions into the evanescent medium of music"

    © 2003 V.J. Singal

    This Month's Other Words

    Prevaricate
    Arcane and Arcana
    Monolith
    Protestation
    Egomaniacal
    Penchant
    Intractable

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