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What is "fugacious"

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fugacious
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Fugacious

Fugacious \Fu*ga"cious\, a. [L. fugax, fugacis, from fugere: cf. F. fugace. See Fugitive.]

  1. Flying, or disposed to fly; fleeing away; lasting but a short time; volatile.

    Much of its possessions is so hid, so fugacious, and of so uncertain purchase.
    --Jer. Taylor.

  2. (Biol.) Fleeting; lasting but a short time; -- applied particularly to organs or parts which are short-lived as compared with the life of the individual.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
fugacious

"fleeing, likely to flee," 1630s, with -ous + Latin fugaci-, stem of fugax "apt to flee, timid, shy," figuratively "transitory, fleeting," from fugere "to flee" (see fugitive). Related: Fugaciously; fugaciousness; fugacity.

Wiktionary
fugacious

a. fleeting, fading quickly, transient.

WordNet
fugacious

adj. enduring a very short time; "the ephemeral joys of childhood"; "a passing fancy"; "youth's transient beauty"; "love is transitory but at is eternal"; "fugacious blossoms" [syn: ephemeral, passing, short-lived, transient, transitory]

Usage examples of "fugacious".

In the powder, he recognized its essentially earthy nature, its fugacious atoms, and its con-nection through smoke with the spirits of the air.

Then it appeared that the cook would not believe in them, and he did not send them, till they were quite faint, the peppery and muddy draught which impudently affected to be coffee, the oily slices of fugacious potatoes slipping about in their shallow dish and skillfully evading pursuit, the pieces of beef that simulated steak, the hot, greasy biscuit, steaming evilly up into the face when opened, and then soddening into masses of condensed dyspepsia.

Honours and dignities are transient, beauty and riches frail and fugacious, to a proverb.

Canada, as well as of other parts of North-America, produce this plant in abundance with us it flowers in the beginning of April: its blossoms are fugacious, and fully expand only in fine warm weather.

It is useless to deny the rarity and worth of the skill that can report so perfectly and with such exquisite humor all the fugacious and manifold emotions of the modern maiden and her lover.

Fugacious rainbows rippled along reptilian convolutions like oil spilled on water: rubious, rubicelle, aureate, viridescent, argent, cerulean.