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.
These days, the transience of “Spiral Jetty” reads like an early warning of climate chaos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 15, 2026
The instrumental music is often skeletal, with an ensemble consisting almost entirely of plucked instruments, their quick decays a reminder of transience.
From New York Times ● Jan. 17, 2024
Most alarmingly, DRM accelerates the transience of our digital goods.
From Slate ● Dec. 26, 2023
“He’s looking at the world holistically. I feel like his practice is a way of creating a universal story of migration, immigration, transience, what is home and where is home.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2023
Like an old man with rheumy eyes watching children play, seeing only transience in their shrill elation and their wholehearted commitment to life.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
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.
