Word of the day
Ephemeral
Lasting only a short time, in a way that matters.
Ephemeral describes anything that lasts only a short while and is understood, even at the time, to be passing. A mayfly's afternoon, a chalk drawing on a sidewalk before the rain, the smell of someone's perfume in an empty lift: all ephemeral. The word is slightly literary and slightly wistful. It does not mean simply short or brief; it implies that the brevity is part of the meaning. Things that are ephemeral often gain their value from the fact that you cannot keep them.
Lasting only a short time, in a way that matters.
The cherry blossom is celebrated precisely because it is ephemeral: a week of pink, then gone for a year.
Themes: nature·philosophy·literature
Examples
- The cherry blossom is celebrated precisely because it is ephemeral: a week of pink, then gone for a year.
- Most internet memes are gloriously ephemeral, dead within a fortnight and incomprehensible within a year.
- He warned the board that consumer enthusiasm could be ephemeral and that the brand needed deeper roots than a viral campaign.
Where it comes from
Ephemeral comes from the Greek ephēmeros, literally 'on, for, or lasting a day'. It is built from epi, meaning 'on' or 'for', and hēmera, meaning 'day'. The Greeks used it as a medical term: an ephemeros was a fever that ran its course in twenty-four hours. Hippocratic writings refer to ephemeral fevers, and the word travelled into Latin medicine as ephemera. The English adjective is first recorded in the 1570s, initially in the same medical sense; by 1620 writers were applying it more broadly to anything short-lived. The biological connection survives in entomology: an ephemeropteran is the order of mayflies, named for adults that often live only a day or two after emerging from the water. The figurative meaning, used for fashions, fame, beauty and weather, hardened in English by the eighteenth century. Modern French éphémère, Italian effimero and Spanish efímero come from the same Greek root, and the resemblance lets the word travel comfortably between European languages.
Stories around the word
Ephemeral has had two parallel careers, one literal and one literary. In biology it is technical: ephemeral streams flow only after rain, ephemeral plants race from seed to seed in a few weeks of desert spring, and mayflies (the order Ephemeroptera) carry the word in their family name and live, as adults, for hours rather than days. The mayfly's biology is pinned to the meaning of the word: the adult often has no functional mouthparts, because it is not built to eat, only to mate and lay eggs and die before nightfall. In the arts the word has been a quiet flag for whole movements. The Japanese aesthetic of mono no aware, the gentle sadness at the passing of things, is often translated into English with this adjective. The British land artist Andy Goldsworthy builds sculptures of ice, leaves and balanced stones so that the camera will record what the wind, the tide or the warming sun will quickly erase. Snapchat made a multibillion-dollar product out of ephemeral images, betting that people would say things in pictures if the pictures did not stick around. Librarians use the word in a third sense: 'ephemera' as a noun (often plural) refers to printed matter that was never meant to outlive its moment, like train tickets, theatre programmes, election leaflets, takeaway menus and matchbox labels. Some of the most prized objects in archives today, including the only surviving copies of certain Shakespeare playbills and early labour-movement leaflets, are exactly these things, kept by accident because a single collector refused to throw them out. The word, in other words, has a habit of outliving itself, and a small army of archivists is paid every year to make sure it goes on doing so for at least one more generation of researchers.
Sources and further reading
Common questions
- How do you pronounce ephemeral?
- Four syllables: ih-FEM-er-ul. The stress falls on the second syllable, with a short 'e' as in 'gem'. The 'ph' is a simple 'f' sound, a souvenir from the Greek phi. American and British pronunciations are essentially identical, although speakers in Britain often clip the final two syllables into a near-schwa.
- Is ephemeral the same as temporary?
- They overlap, but the connotation differs. Temporary is neutral and administrative: a temporary password, a temporary repair. Ephemeral is descriptive and slightly elegiac: it suggests that the brevity is part of what matters. A scaffold is temporary; a sunset is ephemeral. Using ephemeral for something purely functional usually sounds overwrought.
- Can people be ephemeral?
- In poetry, yes; in everyday speech, rarely. You can describe an ephemeral mood, an ephemeral celebrity, or even an ephemeral generation, but calling a person ephemeral can sound either bleakly philosophical or a little cruel. Most writers reserve it for moments, sensations, weather, fashions and small natural events.
- What is the noun form?
- There are two. 'Ephemerality' is the abstract quality of being short-lived, used in essays and academic writing. 'Ephemera' (used as a plural noun) refers to printed objects that were never meant to last: tickets, posters, pamphlets, takeaway menus. Confusingly, the singular ephemeron exists for a single such item, but it is rare outside collectors' circles.
Explore more
Use the left and right arrow keys