evanescence

[ev-uh-nes-uhns]

noun

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.

Word History and Origins

Origin of evanescence¹

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

Example Sentences

They are intricate and variegated, playing with scale, with transience and permanence, with memory and evanescence.

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

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People strolled about, glancing up at the delicate ceiling above their heads and out to the far shore of the basin, where still more of the trees created a distant cloud of frail evanescence.

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Their brief and glorious friendship suggested that healing might be possible, even as Piccolo’s death at 26 warned of its evanescence.

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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.

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