fugacious

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin fugācius, comparative of fugāciter (“evasively, fleetingly”), from fugāx (“transitory, fleeting”), from fugiō (“I flee”).

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /fjuːˈɡeɪ.ʃəs/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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Adjective

fugacious (comparative more fugacious, superlative most fugacious)

1. Fleeting, fading quickly, transient.
   • 1906, O. Henry, “The Furnished Room”, in The Four Million:

     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.

   • 1916, George Edmund De Schweinitz, Diseases of the Eye‎, page 589:

     Watering of the eye, conjunctival congestion, distinct catarrhal conjunctivitis, and deep-seated scleral congestions, sometimes fugacious, and often accompanied by intense headache […]

   • 2011, Michael Feeney Callan, Robert Redford: The Biography‎, Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page xvii:

     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.