evanescence

American  

[ev-uh-nes-uhns] / ˌɛv əˈnɛs əns /

noun

• evanescences
  plural

1. the quality of being fleeting or vanishing quickly; impermanence.

   the evanescence of dreams.

2. the act or fact of vanishing quickly.

   The target audience is left only with the dominant message after the evanescence of the advertisement.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• evanescences
  plural

Etymology

Origin of evanescence

evanesc(ent) ( def. ) + -ence ( def. )

Explanation

After you lose a loved one, often you're gripped with a fear of evanescence, or the rapid fading from sight or memory of that person. Evanescence comes from the Latin evanescere meaning "disappear, vanish." Something that possesses qualities of evanescence, has a quality of disappearing or vanishing. The evanescence of a shooting star makes it hard to catch — it's there one moment and gone the next. Evanescence is a word typically used to describe an event that fades from sight or memory, or sometimes the fleeting quality of worldly success.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

evanescence evanescences

Yu Ji’s cement sculptures take the shape of contorted human bodies—not uncomfortable but limberly twisted and folded—that are missing limbs; their contrasting materials and postures at once suggest permanence and evanescence.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 13, 2026

Another cause is the evanescence of serious history curricula in schools, and an ignorance of the honor in service.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025

The book’s setting 30-odd years ago comes to dovetail with that age gap’s built-in sense of evanescence.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 7, 2023

Today, more than 22 years later, as I hear Fred’s name praised to the skies, but in terms rooted in the past tense, the reality of life’s evanescence comes home to me.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 10, 2021

Here was her evanescence, and it was like dying all over again.

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor

He knew the loveliness in a profile, he saw always the evanescences of light upon light and purposeless things.

From Adventures in the Arts Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets by Marsden Hartley

Every artist knows that between the thought that first gave rise to his design, and each one which appears in it, there are innumerable intermediate evanescences of sensation which no man felt but himself.

From Literary Character of Men of Genius Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions by Isaac Disraeli