transientness

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Temporary duration

Nouns

1. transientness, transience, evanescence, impermanence, fugacity, mortality, span; nine days' wonder, bubble, ephemerality; short term; spurt; planned obsolescence; temporary arrangement, interregnum; brevity, shortness; suddenness (see instantaneity); changeableness. Informal, half-life. Slang, flash in the pan.

2. transient, guest; bird of passage; migrant, part-timer, contingent or temporary worker, hired help. Informal, temp.

Verbs — be transient, flit, pass away, fly, gallop, vanish, evanesce, fade, evaporate; blow over; one's days are numbered.

Adjectives — transient, transitory, transitive; passing, evanescent, volatile, fleeting, elusive, elusory; flying; fugacious, fugitive; shifting, slippery; spasmodic; temporal, temporary; provisional, provisory; cursory, shortlived, meteoric, ephemeral, deciduous; perishable, mortal, precarious; impermanent; brief, quick, extemporaneous, summary; sudden, momentary, short and sweet.

Adverbs — temporarily, pro tempore; for the moment, for a time, for the nonce, for the time being; awhile, en passant, briefly.

Phrases — tempus fugit (time flies); here today, gone tomorrow; sic transit gloria mundi (thus passes the glory of the world).

Quotations — Like that of leaves is the generation of men (Homer), For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday (Bible), All flesh is as grass (Bible), Gather ye rosebuds while ye may (Robert Herrick), They are not long, the days of wine and roses (Ernest Dowson), Ev'ry day a little dies (Stephen Sondheim), Unbidden guests are often welcomest when they are gone (Shakespeare).

Antonyms, see durability.