Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Lasting for a markedly brief time: "There remain some truths too ephemeral to be captured in the cold pages of a court transcript” ( Irving R. Kaufman).
- adj. Living or lasting only for a day, as certain plants or insects do.
- n. A markedly short-lived thing.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In zoology, lasting but one day; ephemeric; ephemerous.
- Hence Existing or continuing for a very short time only; short-lived; transitory.
- Also, rarely, ephemeric.
- Synonyms Transient, fleeting, evanescent.
- n. Anything which lasts or lives but for a day or for a very short time, as certain insects.
Wiktionary
- n. Something which lasts for a short period of time.
- adj. Lasting for a short period of time.
- adj. biology Existing for only one day, as with some flowers, insects, and diseases.
- adj. geology, of a body of water Usually dry, but filling with water for brief periods during and after precipitation.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Beginning and ending in a day; existing only, or no longer than, a day; diurnal.
- adj. Short-lived; existing or continuing for a short time only.
- n. Anything lasting but a day, or a brief time; an ephemeral plant, insect, etc.
WordNet 3.0
- n. anything short-lived, as an insect that lives only for a day in its winged form
- adj. lasting a very short time
Etymologies
- From New Latin ephemerus, from Ancient Greek ἐφήμερος (ephēmeros), the more common form of ἐφημέριος (ephemerios, "of, for, or during the day, living or lasting but for a day, short-lived, temporary"), from ἐπί (epi, "on") + ἡμέρα (hēmera, "day"). (Wiktionary)
- From Greek ephēmeros : ep-, epi-, epi- + hēmerā, day. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“When your entire brand is built on the temporary, fleeting, and inevitably obsolete currency of youthful physical beauty, sexual allure, and cultural status, the word "ephemeral" comes to mind.”
The Huffington Post: Lorraine Devon Wilke: You're Not Keeping Up With The Kardashians Either
“How, then, with that kind of history, do you think the government will fare attempting to prevent the flow of something so ephemeral is “electronic bits” around the world?”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Outrageous Treaty Nonsense, or The Copyright Tail Wagging the Internet Dog
“That moment where you know something profound and ephemeral is happening and you are not just the witness, put part of the action, the experience, absorbing every moment into every cell.”
Lightning on the Canvass « California Life: Better Than Happy Hour
“That moment where you know something profound and ephemeral is happening and [...]”
19 « October « 2008 « California Life: Better Than Happy Hour
“It was a place in which happiness could only break through in short ephemeral bursts, briefly streaking across our skies like a dying comet.”
“With these concerns on his mind, Kant now supplements "voice" with the further hypothesis that aesthetic experience, far from being something ephemeral, is in essence "contemplative" and therefore invested in its own prolongation:”
“And using the word ephemeral in its strict sense, Don Marquis is unquestionably the cleverest of our ephemeral philosophers.”
“In so doing, the goodness which would be ephemeral is embalmed; the examples worthy of perpetual imitation are kept as ever-burning lights in the darkness of the world.”
“A popularity based solely on immediacy is by definition ephemeral; if the plays' success derived from their ability to speak to a specific zeitgeist, this also meant they dated very quickly.”
“Often drawn to what could be called ephemeral materials -- one of the best-known Arte Povera figures, Piero Manzoni, notoriously canned and sold his own excrement in the early 1960s -- the movement's artists were as humorous as the minimalists were solemn, as idiosyncratic as the American conceptualists were dogmatic.”
The Wall Street Journal: Inside a Labyrinth, an Artist's Obsessions
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ephemeral’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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Impressionism
Words that describe the art of the impressionist era.
seascapes, landscapes, modern, impression, impressionist, contemporary, flicker, sensation, modernity, perceived, perceiving, momentary and 142 more...
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Familiar
Just a list of words
fulminate, unctuous, malediction, lumpenproletariat, descry, surfeit, sententious, supernumerary, unabashed, picayune, obliterate, decry and 109 more...
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allover
reintegrate, spight, surveillant, harmonize, Colophon, workplace, bigoted, unsighted, bridgework, salutation, voltmeter, octane and 159 more...
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501
Classic
mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly and 401 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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501
Classic
irk, teem, blight, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado and 401 more...
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501
Classic
bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august and 401 more...
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Used
halcyon, ineluctable, inspissated, incarnadine, askance, demur, saltation, requisite, effusive, specious, liminality, indomitable and 114 more...
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life, death, rebirth
vale of tears, aborning, transmigration, reincarnate, nativity, nascence, metempsychosis, palingenesis, againrising, psychopannychism, thnetopsychism, shuffle off this ... and 104 more...
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Words For Novel (Part 2)
fable, sprite, syphilitic, anvil, wonderstruck, vertigo, bridled, tufted, fettered, savvy, tweed fedora, tryst and 255 more...
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GRE
predilection, explicit, appeal, supplication, appealing, enchanting, ovation, pertinent, apropos, opportunely, applicable, germane and 381 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 567 more...
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Ballardian
All things descriptive from JG
Ballardoperation mindfuck, pataphysics, wahrheitssensible..., polymorphism, postprandial, covalent, stygian, lucus a non lucendo, kafkaesque, leitmotif, fugacious, ablate and 77 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ephemeral.
knitandpurl "Her lists were made up and closed, so that while she wandered slowly through the Princess's rooms dropping into one ear after another: 'You won't forget tomorrow,' she had the ephemeral glory of averting her eyes, while continuing to smile, if she caught sight of some ugly duckling who was to be avoided or some country squire for whom the bond of a schoolboy friendship had secured admission to 'Gilbert's,' and whose presence at her garden-party would be no gain."
--Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 96 of the Modern Library paperback edition Feb 2, 2009
knitandpurl "I felt it in the little square that lay in front of the theatre, in which, in two-hours' time, the bare boughs of the chestnut-trees would gleam with a metallic lustre as the lighted gas-lamps showed up every detail of their structure; and before the ticket attendants, whose selection, advancement and ultimate fate depended upon the great artist—for she alone held power in this administration at the head of which ephemeral and purely nominal managers followed one after the other in an obscure succession—who took our tickets without even glancing at us, so preoccupied were they in seeing that all Mme Berma's instructions had been duly transmitted to the new members of the staff, that it was clearly understood that the hired applause must never sound for her, that the windows must all be kept open so long as she was not on stage and every door closed tight the moment she appeared, that a bowl of hot water must be concealed somewhere close to her to make the dust settle."
-- Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 22 of the Modern Library paperback edition Mar 5, 2008
brandon.arnold The Greek hêmera (day-break, daybreak, daylight, days, daytime), after the goddess Hemera of 'days', is the base for this beauty of a word. The hemero root was used to mean 'day', which gives the word its metaphorical relationship to all that is temporal or passing, as the passing of a day. Nov 26, 2007
bilby You'd probably want to be born with a bit of poetry in your life if you only lived for a day.
Nov 23, 2007
seanahan The Mayfly is of the order ephemeroptera, which is a beautifully poetic way of describing the insect. Jul 7, 2007