Transitory

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Transitory \Tran"si*to*ry\, a. [L. transitorius: cf. F.
     transitoire. See {Transient}.]
     Continuing only for a short time; not enduring; fleeting;
     evanescent.
     [1913 Webster]
  


           Comfort and succor all those who, in this transitory
           life, are in trouble.                    --Bk. of Com.
                                                    Prayer.
     [1913 Webster]
  
           It was not the transitory light of a comet, which
           shines and glows for a wile, and then . . . vanishes
           into nothing.                            --South.
     [1913 Webster]
  
     {Transitory action} (Law), an action which may be brought in
        any county, as actions for debt, and the like; -- opposed
        to local action. --Blackstone. Bouvier.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     Syn: transient; short-lived; brief. See {Transient}.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  transitory
       adj : enduring a very short time; "the ephemeral joys of
             childhood"; "a passing fancy"; "youth's transient
             beauty"; "love is transitory but at is eternal";
             "fugacious blossoms" [syn: {ephemeral}, {passing}, {short-lived},
              {transient}, {fugacious}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  97 Moby Thesaurus words for "transitory":
     able to adapt, adaptable, adjustable, alterable, alterative, brief,
     brittle, capricious, changeable, checkered, circumforaneous,
     corruptible, deciduous, discursive, divagatory, drifting, dying,
     ephemeral, errant, evanescent, ever-changing, fading, fickle,
     fleeting, flexible, flitting, floating, fluid, fly-by-night,
     flying, footloose, footloose and fancy-free, fragile, frail,
     fugacious, fugitive, gadding, gypsy-like, gypsyish, impermanent,
     impetuous, impulsive, inconstant, insubstantial, kaleidoscopic,
     landloping, malleable, many-sided, meandering, metamorphic,
     migrational, migratory, mobile, modifiable, momentary, mortal,
     movable, mutable, nomad, nomadic, nondurable, nonpermanent,
     nonuniform, passing, perishable, permutable, plastic, protean,
     proteiform, rambling, ranging, resilient, roaming, roving, rubbery,
     shifting, short-lived, short-term, straggling, straying, strolling,
     supple, temporal, temporary, traipsing, transient, transitive,
     transmigratory, transubstantiate, undurable, unenduring, unstable,
     vagabond, vagrant, variable, volatile, wandering
  
  

From Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [bouvier]:

  TRANSITORY. That which lasts but a short time, as transitory facts that 
  which may be laid in different places, as a transitory action.