fleeting
/ˈfliːtɪŋ/
fleeting adjective: passing quickly; of short duration. Also the present participle and gerund of fleet.
Adjective
fleeting (comparative more fleeting, superlative most fleeting)
- Passing quickly; of short duration.
- Architecture, sculpture, painting are static arts. Even in literature "our flying minds," as George Meredith says, cannot contain protracted description. It is so; for from sequences of words they must assemble all the details in one simultaneous impression. But moments of fleeting beauty too...1931, Martha Kinross, “The Screen — From This Side”, in The Fortnightly, volume 130, page 511
- As they passed, accelerating, on to the bridge and felt the first bite of the incline beyond, one had a fleeting glimpse of driver and fireman, illumined as by the fires of hell, the one tugging at the regulator handle, the other shovelling for dear life.1953 December, Henry Maxwell, “The Folkestone Harbour Branch: Some Evocations”, in Railway Magazine, page 809
- That which flees, especially quickly; fugitive.
Noun
fleeting (uncountable)
- An automatic operation mode of an absolute signal that reserves a route for several trains following one another, without the need for dispatcher to re-set the route for each train.
Also used as
fleeting is also the present participle and gerund of fleet.
fleeting meaning in Gujarati and Persian
fleeting in Gujarati
- ક્ષણભંગુર
fleeting in Persian
- passing quickly
- گذرا gozarâ
Examples of fleeting in a sentence
- But moments of fleeting beauty too transient to be caught by any means less swift than light itself are registered on the screen.1931, Martha Kinross, “The Screen — From This Side”, in The Fortnightly, volume 130, page 511:
- During the fleeting summer months of his field season, when the outer vestiges of winter melted briefly, there were ponds and pools and lakes of water everywhere.2003, Gabrielle Walker, Snowball Earth: The Story of a Maverick Scientist and His Theory of the Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life As We...
- For starters, we see examples all the time of some middle-aged men trying to hang onto their own fleeting youth by sporting younger women on their arms.2008, Barbara L. Bellman, Susan Goldstein, Flirting After Fifty: Lessons for Grown-Up Women on How to Find Love Again, iUniverse, published...
- And I am inspired afresh to pursue the stunning beauty of Christ rather than the fleeting beauty of this world.2010, Leslie Ludy, The Lost Art of True Beauty: The Set-Apart Girl's Guide to Feminine Grace, Harvest House Publishers, published 2010...
Synonyms of fleeting
15 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of fleeting
| comparative | more fleeting |
|---|---|
| superlative | most fleeting |
Origin of fleeting
From Middle English fleten (“to float”), from Old English flēotan (“to float”), from Proto-Germanic *fleutaną, from Proto-Indo-European *plewd-. By surface analysis, fleet + -ing.
Words formed from fleeting
Phrases with fleeting
Words that rhyme with fleeting
Questions about fleeting
- What does fleeting mean?
- Fleeting means passing quickly; of short duration.
- What is fleeting in Gujarati?
- Fleeting in Gujarati is ક્ષણભંગુર. See Fleeting meaning in Gujarati.
- How do you use fleeting in a sentence?
- But moments of fleeting beauty too transient to be caught by any means less swift than light itself are registered on the screen.
- What part of speech is fleeting?
- Fleeting can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce fleeting?
- Fleeting is pronounced /ˈfliːtɪŋ/.
Words near fleeting in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: fleeting (page history and authors); fleeting (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-fleeting.ogg.
Cite this entry: “fleeting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fleeting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.