Adjective

(en adjective)

Fleeting, fading quickly, transient.

* 1906 , O. Henry, "", in The Four Million :

Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes.

* 1916 , George Edmund De Schweinitz, Diseases of the Eye , page 589:

Watering of the eye, conjunctival congestion, distinct catarrhal conjunctivitis, and deep-seated scleral congestions, sometimes fugacious , and often accompanied by intense headache

* 2011 , Michael Feeney Callan, Robert Redford: The Biography , Alfred A. Knopf (2011), ISBN 9780307272973, page xvii:

It may be that Redford's fugacious nature is not so mysterious, that it is studded in the artwork of the labs and the very stones of Sundance.

Adjective

(en adjective)

Evading capture, comprehension or remembrance.

The elusive criminal was arrested

* {{quote-book

, year=1910 , author=Jack London , title=Lost Face , chapter=6 citation , passage=Charley chased the elusive idea through all the nooks and crannies of his drowning consciousness.}}

Rarely seen.

*

Difficult to describe.

A precise definition of diarrhea is elusive (Robbin's pathology, 8th ed)