evanescence

American  

[ev-uh-nes-uhns] / ˌɛv əˈnɛs əns /

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.

---

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

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

A part of it is the evanescence, that it disappears.

From Washington Post • Oct. 18, 2021

In some lights they were hardly there at all, just visible as a drifting quality in the light, a rhythmic evanescence, like veils of transparency turning before a mirror.

From "The Subtle Knife" by Philip Pullman