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Today's Word "Fugacious"

Fleeting or fleeing on

Published in Vocabulary

Fugacious \fyu-GEY-shehs\ (adjective) - Fleeting, fleeing, running away, passing quickly; (botany) withering and falling off early or very soon.

"He lived on fugacious glimpses of her face until he roused enough pluck to ask her out."

 

"Fugacious" comes from Latin fugax (fugac-s) from fugere "to flee," the verb in the phrase tempus fugit "time flies." It is akin to Greek pheugein "to run away." The original Proto-Indo-European root (see the new section of the Library) was *bheug- with that funny [bh] sound with the puff of air that became [f] at the beginning of Latin words (remember fornix "oven" vs. English burn?) So we find Lithuanian baugus "fearful, frightful." The same root probably lies behind Sanskrit bhuj "bend" and German beugen "to bend."


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