Word of the Day

: February 2, 2010

evanescent

adjective ev-uh-NESS-unt

What It Means

: tending to vanish like vapor

evanescent in Context

"Dance is the most evanescent of the arts, evaporating into memory the instant it's completed." (Jordan Levin, The Miami Herald, November 13, 2008)

Did You Know?

The fragile, airy quality of things evanescent reflects the etymology of the word "evanescent" itself. It derives from a form of the Latin verb "evanescere," which means "to evaporate" or "to vanish." Given the similarity in spelling between the two words, you might expect "evaporate" to come from the same Latin root, but it actually grew out of another steamy Latin root, "evaporare."