Synonyms:
fleeting, fugitive, momentaneous, momentary
Meaning: lasting for a markedly brief time; "a fleeting glance"; "fugitive hours"; "rapid momentaneous association of things that meet and pass"; "a momentary glimpse"
Usage examples
Opportunity, as we know, is fleeting.
Susceptibility to fleeting impressions
This fleeting hour of light is very pleasant, but of course dependent on a clear sky, very rare.
"But what is non-intervention seems to vary as often as the light and shade of every fleeting cloud.
That evening, at the crowded corner by the Cafe de la Paix, I caught a fleeting glimpse of Laploshka.
The doubt that crept through my mind as to any possibility of connivance between her and Pickering was as vague and fleeting as the shadow of a swallow’s wing on a sunny meadow.
'I think, my dear son,' returned Mrs. Maylie, laying her hand upon his shoulder, 'that youth has many generous impulses which do not last; and that among them are some, which, being gratified, become only the more fleeting.
But if to any one the idea of a man be but the vital union of parts in a certain shape; as long as that vital union and shape remain in a concrete, no otherwise the same but by a continued succession of fleeting particles, it will be the SAME MAN.
Supposing a rational spirit vitally united to a body of a certain conformation of parts to make a man; whilst that rational spirit, with that vital conformation of parts, though continued in a fleeting successive body, remains, it will be the SAME MAN.
It had been no vestal who chose THAT missile for opening her attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short; fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp one might momentarily see an inscription on a wall before being enshrouded in darkness.