Ephemeral: short-lived, lasting or living for just one day.
Synonyms: fleeting, short-lived, brief, temporal
Originally, ephemeral was a medical term. Ephemeral described a sickness or a fever lasting only one day. Over time came to mean ‘lasting a short period of time.’ We began using the word to describe anything fleeting, momentary or transitory. An ephemeral flower, or the ephemeral life span of an insect, for example.
We saw our efforts as ephemeral. Language, we knew, is in ceaseless flux. – The Story of English by the Roberts McCrum and MacNeil, Introduction page xii.
