transience
Americannoun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of transience
First recorded in 1735–45; transi(ent) + -ence
Explanation
If your grandmother is always talking about how quickly the years go by, she is focused on life's transience, or briefness. Summer's quality of seeming to be over just as it's started can be described as transience — anything that feels impossibly brief has that same attribute. People most often use the noun transience when they're talking about good things, like beautiful days, a nice life, or a fun vacation, that seem to be over in an instant. The word comes from the Latin transiens, "passing over or away."
Vocabulary lists containing transience
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
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Reading Lolita in Tehran
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The Sound and the Fury
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Transience drives sports; the next big thing is always due to arrive.
From Washington Post • Jan. 17, 2023
Transience and struggle right alongside recreation and privilege, a familiar mix in today’s California.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 14, 2022
Transience pervades this slim novel: in the father’s itinerant career, in the pace at which new information undermines M’s prior conception of life.
From New York Times • Jan. 29, 2021
Why release your new compilation Transience on vinyl?
From BBC • Sep. 16, 2015
The doctrine of Transience was the first entrance gate of Hinayanism.
From The Religion of the Samurai A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and Japan by Nukariya, Kaiten
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
