Adjacent Words

ephemeral definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: lasting a very short time; "the ephemeral joys of childhood"; "a passing fancy"; "youth's transient beauty"; "love is transitory but it is eternal"; "fugacious blossoms" [syn: ephemeral, passing, short-lived, transient, transitory, fugacious] n
1: anything short-lived, as an insect that lives only for a day in its winged form [syn: ephemeron, ephemeral]

Merriam Webster's

I. adjective Etymology: Greek eph?meros lasting a day, daily, from epi- + h?mera day Date: 1576 1. lasting one day only <an ephemeral fever> 2. lasting a very short time <ephemeral pleasures> Synonyms: see transient • ephemerally adverb II. noun Date: 1807 something ephemeral; specifically a plant that grows, flowers, and dies in a few days

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 lasting or of use for only a short time; transitory. 2 lasting only a day. 3 (of an insect, flower, etc.) lasting a day or a few days. Derivatives: ephemerality n. ephemerally adv. ephemeralness n. Etymology: Gk ephemeros: see EPHEMERA

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Ephemeral E*phem"er*al, a. 1. Beginning and ending in a day; existing only, or no longer than, a day; diurnal; as, an ephemeral flower. 2. Short-lived; existing or continuing for a short time only. ``Ephemeral popularity.'' --V. Knox. Sentences not of ephemeral, but of eternal, efficacy. --Sir J. Stephen. Ephemeral fly (Zo["o]l.), one of a group of neuropterous insects, belonging to the genus Ephemera and many allied genera, which live in the adult or winged state only for a short time. The larv[ae] are aquatic; -- called also day fly and May fly.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Ephemeral E*phem"er*al, n. Anything lasting but a day, or a brief time; an ephemeral plant, insect, etc.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

If you describe something as ephemeral, you mean that it lasts only for a very short time. (FORMAL) He talked about the country's ephemeral unity being shattered by the defeat... = transient ADJ

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. short-lived, transitory, transient, fleeting, flitting, evanescent, fugitive, fugacious, momentary, brief.

Moby Thesaurus

brief, brittle, capricious, changeable, corruptible, deciduous, dying, episodic, evanescent, evergreen, fading, fickle, fleeting, flitting, fly-by-night, flying, fragile, frail, fugacious, fugitive, half-hardy, hardy, impermanent, impetuous, impulsive, inconstant, insubstantial, momentary, mortal, mutable, nondurable, nonpermanent, passing, perennial, perishable, short, short-lived, subject to death, temporal, temporary, transient, transitive, transitory, undurable, unenduring, unstable, volatile