TRANSIENT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Transient

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/trˈænʒənt/ Listen

adjective

Transient adj.

Passing before the sight or perception, or, as it were, moving over or across a space or scene viewed, and then disappearing; hence, of short duration; not permanent; not lasting or durable; not stationary; passing; fleeting; brief; transitory; as, transient pleasure. "Measured this transient world."

Hasty; momentary; imperfect; brief; as, a transient view of a landscape.

Staying for a short time; not regular or permanent; as, a transient guest; transient boarders. (Colloq. U. S.)

Synonyms: Transient, Transitory, Fleeting. Transient represents a thing as brief at the best; transitory, as liable at any moment to pass away. Fleeting goes further, and represents it as in the act of taking its flight. Life is transient; its joys are transitory; its hours are fleeting. "What is loose love? A transient gust." "If (we love) transitory things, which soon decay, Age must be loveliest at the latest day." "O fleeting joys Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes."

noun

Transient n. That which remains but for a brief time.

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Etymology of 'Transient'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Transient" Quotes from Famous Books

... inaptly, be compared to a grim sentinel guarding the destinies of a nation. But who shall attempt a description of its glories as we saw it that evening at sunset, and many an evening afterward, with the chance and transient effect of light and shade ...

— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... every fancied pleasure, that the toil, the sweat, and blood of slaves can procure. Alas for the tyrant slave-holder when God shall make his award to his poor, oppressed, and despised children, and to those who seek a transient and yet delusive means of present happiness by trampling his fellow and brother in the dust, and appropriating the soul and body of his own crushed victim to the gratification of his depraved appetites ...

— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... Ulrich is only an instance of the solidarity of Pan-Germanism. An English or American banker visiting a foreign country attends to his affairs and departs. A German in a similar position is a sort of human ferret. An hotel with us is a place of residence for transient strangers. The Hotel Adlon and others in Berlin are excellent hotels as such, but mixed up with spying upon strangers; Herr Adlon, senior, a friend of the Kaiser's, assists the Government spies when any important or suspicious ...

— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... and transient exceptions (which, it may be incidentally remarked, are easily explicable from what follows) antiquity and the Middle Ages had no political economy. This was not because the men of those times were not sharp-sighted ...

— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... the structure which had been erected with such pains and sacrifice to fall to pieces just when it was attaining form and character. The time for universal toleration might come later, when the vigor and solidity of the nucleus could no longer be vitiated by fanciful and transient vagaries. The right of private judgment carried no guarantee comparable with that which attached to the sober and tested convictions of the harmonious ...

— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

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