Word of the Day for Tuesday August 30, 2005 evanescent \ev-uh-NES-uhnt\, adjective: Liable to vanish or pass away like vapor; fleeting. The Pen which gives. . . permanence to the evanescent thought of a moment. --Horace Smith, Tin Trumpet Every tornado is a little different, and they are all capricious, evanescent and hard to get a fix on. --"Oklahoma Tornado Offers Hints of How a Killer Storm Is Born," [1]New York Times, May 11, 1999 The accidentally famous. . . may write books, appear on talk shows, and, in so doing, attract even greater public attention. This type of celebrity status, of course, is brittle and evanescent. --Lawrence M. Friedman, [2]The Horizontal Society _________________________________________________________ Evanescent is from Latin evanescere, "to vanish," from e-, "from, out of" + vanescere, "to disappear," from vanus, "empty." References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/ 2. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0300075456/ref=nosim/lexico Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=9&q=evanescent