evanescent
/ˌɛvəˈnɛsənt/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.15 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
4
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
adj
adj
adj
Barely there; almost imperceptible.
Example Sentences
- "He cannot ſuppreſs his diſapprobation […] of thoſe evaneſcent echoes of ſchool philoſophy, faint-warbling through the grove of letters, to the injury of natural and ſcientific knowledge, and the annoyance of English literature."
- "The sea was each little bird's great playmate. […] In their airy flutterings, they seemed to rest on the evanescent spray."
- "I trust your love which will work wonders; and I trust my own, which sprang at a look but only gathered strength and permanence when I found that the soul of the man I love bettered his outward attractions, making the ideal of my foolish girlhood seem as unsubstantial and evanescent as a dream in the glowing noontide."
- "Consequently, the electromagnetic fields have plane-wave characteristics in local regions, except immediately adjacent to a caustic where there is a rapid transition from the wavelike behavior of the local plane-wave fields to the evanescent behavior beyond the ray path."
- "The analyte directly affects the optical properties of a waveguide, such as evanescent waves (electromagnetic waves generated in the medium outside the optical waveguide when light is reflected from within) or surface plasmons (resonances induced by an evanescent wave in a thin film deposited on a waveguide surface)."
- "[…] I choſe rather to reduce the demonſtrations of the following propoſitions to the firſt and laſt ſums and ratio's of naſcent and evaneſcent quantities, that is, to the limits of thoſe ſums and ratio's; […] Perhaps it may be objected, that there is no ultimate proportion of evaneſcent quantities; becauſe the proportion, before the quantities have vaniſhed, is not the ultimate, and when they are vaniſhed, is none. […] [B]y the ultimate ratio of evaneſcent quantities is to be underſtood the ratio of the quantities, not before they vaniſh, nor afterwards, but with which they vaniſh."
Etymology
Borrowed from French évanescent (“evanescent”), from Latin ēvānēscēns (“disappearing, vanishing”), present participle of ēvānēscō (“to disappear, vanish; to die out, fade away; to lapse”), from ē- (variant of ex- (prefix meaning ‘away, out’)) + vānēscō (“to vanish”) (from vānus (“empty, vacant, void”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- (“to abandon, leave”)) + -ēscō (suffix forming verbs with the sense ‘to become’)).
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌɛvəˈnɛsənt/
- British English: /ɛvəˈnɛs(ə)nt/
Inflected Forms
more evanescent (comparative)
most evanescent (superlative)