fugacious

English

WOTD – 22 February 2013

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin fugācius, comparative of fugāciter (“evasively, fleetingly”), from fugāx (“transitory, fleeting”), from fugiō (“I flee”).

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /fjuːˈɡeɪ.ʃəs/

  • Audio (Southern England)

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Adjective

fugacious (comparative more fugacious, superlative most fugacious)

1. Fleeting, fading quickly, transient.
   • 1906, O. Henry, “The Furnished Room”, 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^[1], 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^[2], Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, 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.

Derived terms

• fugaciously
• fugaciousness

Related terms

• fugacity
• fugitive
• fugue

Translations

Fleeting, fading quickly, transient

• Armenian: վաղանցիկ (hy) (vaġancʻik), կարճատեւ (hy) (karčatew), անցողիկ (hy) (ancʻoġik)
• Bulgarian: мимолетен (bg) (mimoleten), краткотраен (bg) (kratkotraen)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 易逃逸的 (yìtáoyì de), 難捕捉的／难捕捉的 (nánbǔzhuō de), 無常的／无常的 (wúcháng de)

• Dutch: vluchtig (nl), vlietend (nl)
• Finnish: katoavainen (fi)
• German: flüchtig (de)
• Japanese: 早く散る (hayaku chiru), 儚い (ja) (hakanai)
• Portuguese: fugaz (pt)
• Romanian: trecător (ro) m, efemer (ro) m, care zboară
• Russian: мимолётный (ru) (mimoljótnyj), скороте́чный (ru) m (skorotéčnyj)
• Spanish: fugaz (es)
• Swedish: flyktig (sv), förgänglig (sv)