transience means the quality of being transient, temporary, brief or fleeting. It carries an Arena rating of 1820, earned across 30 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, transience ranks #842 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #950 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #1,203 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #1,663 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words.
Why “transience” is a great word
The quality or state of being transient; the fact of lasting only for a short time. From the Latin transiens, present participle of transire ("to go across, to pass") + the English suffix -ence, forming a noun of quality; first attested in 1745. Unlike "permanence," which denotes unchanging endurance, or "chronicity," which signifies persistent, often burdensome duration, transience is the quiet insistence of passage itself. It is the morning frost surrendering to the sun, the perfect curve of a soap bubble before it bursts, and the scent of a gardenia blooming for a single night—the unbearable lightness of everything that exists only by leaving.
Etymology
From transient + -ence.
noun
- The quality of being transient, temporary, brief or fleeting.
- An impermanence that suggests the inevitability of ending or dying.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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