Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use fleeting in a sentence

26 example sentences · adjective, noun

Fleeting means passing quickly; of short duration. Example: “But moments of fleeting beauty too transient to be caught by any means less swift than light itself are registered on the screen.”

Examples of fleeting by meaning

adjectivePassing quickly; of short duration.

  • 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...

More sentences with fleeting

  • Fleeting notes serve as raw material for literature notes and permanent notes.2025 June 30, Lenker, Mark, The Human Relationship with Information. From the entry fleeting note
  • Imon and Tev, it knows, have finally sequestered to breed; to their joy Seit gives fleeting wellwish.1991, F. M. Busby, Slow freight, →ISBN, page 122. From the entry wellwish
  • Hunk gave him a fleeting glance and went back to his gumchewing.1947, Joe Archibald, Rebel Halfback, Philadelphia, Pa.: The Westminster Press, page 132. From the entry gumchewing
  • Fleeting notes are made as you read.2025 June 30, Lenker, Mark, The Human Relationship with Information. From the entry fleeting note
  • I discovered that, although elusive and fleeting, gender euphoria did exist, and it was bursting out everywhere from inside me.2024, Alana S. Portero, translated by Mara Faye Lethem, Bad Habit, 4th Estate, page 106. From the entry gender euphoria
  • But what if that Jokerfication isn’t fleeting?2022 April 20, David Sirota, “Joker America”, in The Lever. From the entry Jokerfication
  • But it was the most fleeting of false dawns.2011, Tom Fordyce, “Rugby World Cup 2011: England 12-19 France”, in BBC Sport. From the entry relinquish
  • The telespectator has no material object to watch or possess, only the experience of watching fleeting images on the screen.2009, Paul Connerton, How Modernity Forgets, page 83. From the entry telespectator
  • Skiers and snowboarders are fun, but usually fleeting, subjects.2009 February 17, Rik Fairlie, “5 Ways to Take Great Ski and Snowboard Photos”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times…. From the entry hot-dogger
  • For a fleeting moment, Jed considered doing just that.2007, Jory Sherman, Abilene Gun Down, page 29. From the entry backshooter
  • But since power itself is fleeting, the whole game of the right table at the right restaurant is ongoing.1998 August, Gregg Kilday, “To Live and Dine in LA”, in Spencer Beck, editor, Los Angeles Magazine, volume 43, number 8, Los Angeles…. From the entry dinee
  • Arafat please stand up,” but they have been very fleeting.1996 March 18, Barbara Amiel, “The stream of anti-Israeli vitriol”, in Maclean’s, archived from the original on 15 Oct 2022. From the entry will the real someone please stand up
  • He gave each of his sisters a fleeting and moustachy kiss, and sat down at the breakfast table.1927, Richmal Crompton, Millicent Dorrington, Bello, published 2017, →ISBN. From the entry moustachy
  • Or will it all turn out to be a temporary blip, a fleeting moment of goodwill and good manners, a mere gap in the clouds?2026 May 2, Simon Tisdall, “The king went to Washington to save Britain’s bacon. He may also have shown the US how to save itself”, in The…. From the entry take to heart
  • We knew of this, the secret language grew between my yearning, between her submission, temporary and fleeting, only to be caught again.2013, V. S. Atbay, Epiphany - A Collection of Poems. From the entry mamihlapinatapai
  • A not always visibly but nevertheless significantly Latin music, freestyle originated alongside hip-hop in the Bronx and achieved a quicker yet more fleeting commercial success.2012 March 2, Nick Minichino, “A Quick Primer On Freestyle: 1980s Dancepop's Most Underheralded Genre”, in The Village Voice, archived…. From the entry freestyle
  • The interpreter took a catch step before it translated what he'd said, and Kivrin felt a fleeting surprise that she couldn't understand him.2012, Connie Willis, Doomsday Book. From the entry catch step
  • Pinned against my neighbours, I could feel small hands, fleeting as lizards, fluttering lightly through my pockets in search of money, mobile, wallet.2009, Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower. From the entry mobile
  • If the weather conditions and the local flora are just right, you might come across fleeting, delicate frozen formations sprouting from certain plant stems, literally a garden of ice.2013 September-October, James R. Carter, “Flowers and Ribbons of Ice”, in American Scientist. From the entry drag
  • The neons and spandex of the “Safety Dance” lend Yalies a fleeting escape from their normal selves, the self who un-tags Facebook photos that may hurt their future electability.2009 October 23, Claire Gordon, “The decade that never dies”, in Yale Daily News, archived from the original on 13 Feb 2010. From the entry Yalie
  • For in fact, a month after his fleeting sojourn in Shiuhing had begun, Ruggieri sent his companion Mendes back to Macao to report on the mission's happy beginnings.1995 [1991], Jean Lacouture, translated by Jeremy Leggatt, Jésuites: Une Multibiographie [Jesuits: A Multibiography], Washington, D.C.…. From the entry Shiuhing
  • Men's shirts were never dry save for one fleeting instant when the sun had finished evaporating rain water and sweat had not yet started to pour.1983, James A. Michener, Tales of the South Pacific, page 338. From the entry like a cow on a flat rock
  • Dark: In Larva, Pupa, and Flight details the transformation from a chrysalid state of frustration--rendered here by a dark, mechanistic environment complete with droning soundscape--to a fleeting interlude of freedom.2003 June 20, Kerry Reid, “Choice Cuts”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry chrysalid

Meaning of fleeting

  1. adjective Passing quickly; of short duration.
  2. adjective That which flees, especially quickly; fugitive.
  3. noun 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.

Full definition of fleeting

Questions about fleeting in a sentence

How do you use fleeting in a sentence?
Fleeting is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “But moments of fleeting beauty too transient to be caught by any means less swift than light itself are registered on the screen.”
What is a short sentence with fleeting?
“But what if that Jokerfication isn’t fleeting?”
What does fleeting mean?
Fleeting means passing quickly; of short duration.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fleeting (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use fleeting in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/fleeting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.