Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Vanishing or likely to vanish like vapor.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In mathematics, infinitesimal.
- Vanishing, or apt to vanish or be dissipated, like vapor; passing away; fleeting: as, the pleasures and joys of life are evanescent.
- Lessening or lessened beyond the reach of perception; impalpable; imperceptible.
- In natural history, unstable; unfixed; hence, uncertain; unreliable: applied to characters which are not fixed or uniformly present, and therefore are valueless for scientific classification.
- In entomology, tending to become obsolete in one part; fading out: as, antennal scrobes evanescent posteriorly.
Wiktionary
- adj. Vanishing, disappearing.
- adj. Ephemeral, momentary, fleeting.
- adj. Barely there; almost imperceptible.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Liable to vanish or pass away like vapor; vanishing; fleeting.
- adj. Vanishing from notice; imperceptible.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. tending to vanish like vapor
Examples
“Conventional lenses construct an image of an object only using ordinary waves, discarding information regarding the fine, tiny details of the object that are contained in "evanescent" waves.”
“The sticking point is that art and fashion last, whereas food is evanescent.”
The Guardian: El Bulli closes: Farewell parmesan frozen air...
“Scheduled to open in September, this production, like so many that have preceded it, is more daring than definitive, an impossibly gorgeous tapestry of shimmering music and incisive lyrics undermined by main characters who are as evanescent as the ghostly showgirls who hover over the evening's proceedings.”
The Huffington Post: Martin Maidenberg: So Much To Love, So Much To Regret
“I wanted something familiar, however evanescent, to fill up the awful silence my mother had left in her wake.”
“You could see their faces light up as they realized that they were singing in perfect harmony, their energies perfectly synchronized, the words theirs, their meaning clear and evanescent, the old song suddenly as fresh and new as blossoming daffodils.”
“Fox Searchlight Brad Pitt meets a new arrival in Terrence Malick's 'The Tree of Life' Tiny and vast, eternal and evanescent, these are the polarities of a work of art that defies categorization.”
“Romney's handlers didn't seem to mind or care that the crowd was tepid and the speech evanescent.”
“Though beautiful and often filled with evanescent light, few such later works offer more than a decorous shell of all that Friedrich's painting had held.”
The Wall Street Journal: At the Threshold Between Art and Nature
“The drunken voices of karaoke revelers, the unctuous pitches of the club touts, the secret whispers of lovers walking arm in arm, all are departed, but somehow, for just a few evanescent hours in the quiet of early morning, their shadows linger, like ghosts who refuse to believe the night has ended, that there are no more parties to attend.”
The Huffington Post: Barry Eisler: 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories From the Japan Earthquake
“The real problem is that where both blog and radio welcome the evanescent, books encourage re-reading and rumination.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘evanescent’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 410 more...
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Amber's list
This is a list of my favorite words, words that sound beautiful, or ones that have inspired me. I usually most enjoy words for which I can strongly associate pictures. I hope this list will also ...
clandestine, sumptuous, erogenous, operose, evanescent, panache, sparge, ludicrous, wholehearted, anodyne, eclat, legerdemain and 2 more...
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Hit Parade GRE
Princeton Review words
abscond, aberrant, alacrity, anomaly, approbation, arduous, assuage, audacious, austere, axiomatic, canonical, capricious and 287 more...
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Vocab from High School
Words that I found in an old notebook.
affinity, aggrandizement, altruistic, ameliorate, apochryphal, aversion, blithe, bombastic, cajole, callous, capitulate, capricious and 178 more...
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Units Of Language
Word:
-a unit of language consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning.sulk, promenade, skulk, idle, subsequently, moody, paroxysm, felony, anent, generic, hallucinogen, synaesthesia and 214 more...
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Logodaedalus' Lexical Locutionary
Discombobulating the illiterate since the middle of the last century.
adiaphora, agitprop, alliteration, apophthegm, autarky, bête noire, bezoar, biorhythm, braggadocio, canaille, confabulate, confrère and 209 more...
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-ent
prominent, apparent, firmament, inefficient, dislodgment, advancement, malcontent, pavement, unemployment, shipment, agent, arrangement and 89 more...
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Tory's First Wordie List
perambulate, mumpsimus, euphoric, peripatetic, mellifluous, soporific, neologism, nihilism, nepotism, effervescent, lascivious, esoteric and 217 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2536 more...
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africasunsets's list
serendipity, fragrance, glamour, smitten, nourish, lavish, luxury, wicked, gem, daring, soothe, fantasy and 192 more...
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west ham fool
a list
corollary, pragmatic, desultory, insouciance, hubris, eponymous, paradox, intermezzo, calumny, anodyne, illitterati, subjective and 96 more...
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SCRUBJAYS IDIOM
EXTRAPOLATE, altruistic, misanthropic, predicate, pejoritive, disparaging, bucolic, sylvan, veracity, autodidact, jejune, erudite and 110 more...
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GRE Prep
prattle, precipitate, predilection, prescience, prevaricate, equivocate, qualms, recant, refute, relegate, reticent, solicitous and 269 more...
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Favorite Words
pablum, maundy, histrionic, adamant, ascribe, verbiage, insouciant, erudite, gregarious, superfluous, banal, obdurate and 280 more...
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Good Wordfest Words
burgeon, exacerbate, artifice, cogent, gregarious, magnanimous, conciliatory, deplore, panacea, decimate, insular, deference and 159 more...


Anne Bosworth Greene, "Lambs of March" Jul 25, 2011
--Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright, p 110 of the Modern Library paperback edition Feb 3, 2009
- A Summer of Hummingbirds by Christopher Benfey, p 4 Oct 15, 2008
2. tending to become imperceptible; scarcely perceptible. Sep 22, 2008