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What is the difference between fleeting and ephemeral?

fleeting | ephemeral | Synonyms |

Ephemeral is a synonym of fleeting.



As adjectives the difference between fleeting and ephemeral

is that fleeting is passing quickly while ephemeral is lasting for a short period of time.

As a verb fleeting

is present participle of lang=en.

As a noun ephemeral is

something which lasts for a short period of time.

fleeting

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Passing quickly.
  • * 1931 , Martha Kinross, "The Screen — From This Side", The Fortnightly , Volume 130, page 511:
  • Architecture, sculpture, painting are static arts. Even in literature "our flying minds," as George Meredith says, cannot contain protracted description. It is so; for from sequences of words they must assemble all the details in one simultaneous impression. But moments of fleeting beauty too transient to be caught by any means less swift than light itself are registered on the screen.
  • * 2003 , Gabrielle Walker, Snowball Earth: The Story of a Maverick Scientist and His Theory of the Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life As We Know It , Three Rivers Press (2003), ISBN 1400051258, pages 34-35:
  • During the fleeting summer months of his field season, when the outer vestiges of winter melted briefly, there were ponds and pools and lakes of water everywhere.
  • * 2008 , Barbara L. Bellman & Susan Goldstein, Flirting After Fifty: Lessons for Grown-Up Women on How to Find Love Again , iUniverse (2008), ISBN 9780595428281, page 12:
  • For starters, we see examples all the time of some middle-aged men trying to hang onto their own fleeting youth by sporting younger women on their arms.
  • * 2010 , Leslie Ludy, The Lost Art of True Beauty: The Set-Apart Girl's Guide to Feminine Grace , Harvest House Publishers (2010), ISBN 9780736922906, page 5:
  • And I am inspired afresh to pursue the stunning beauty of Christ rather than the fleeting beauty of this world.

    Synonyms

    * ephemeral * See also .

    Verb

    (head)
  • ephemeral

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Something which lasts for a short period of time.
  • Synonyms

    * (short-lived) ephemeron

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Lasting for a short period of time.
  • * Vicesimus Knox
  • Esteem, lasting esteem, the esteem of good men, like himself, will be his reward, when the gale of ephemeral popularity shall have gradually subsided.
  • * Sir J. Stephen
  • sentences not of ephemeral , but of eternal, efficacy
  • * '>citation
  • It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral , because human, sorrows.
  • (biology) Existing for only one day, as with some flowers, insects, and diseases.
  • (geology, of a body of water) Usually dry, but filling with water for brief periods during and after precipitation.
  • * 1986 , W.H. Raymond, "Clinoptilolite Deposit in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, U.S.A.", in Y?ichi Murakami et al. (editors), New Developments in Zeolite Science and Technology (conference proceedings), Elsevier, ISBN 978-0-444-98981-9, page 80:
  • The graben constitutes a depositional basin and a topographic low, underlain by Cretaceous shales, in which volcanic debris accumulated in ephemeral lakes and streams in Oligocene and early Miocene time.

    Synonyms

    * (lasting for a short period of time) temporary, transitory, fleeting, evanescent, momentary, short-lived, short, volatile * See also

    Antonyms

    * (lasting for a long period of time) permanent, eternal, everlasting, timeless.

    Derived terms

    * ephemerally