Ephemeral / Transitory

Ephemeral / Transitory <-----Edited to add topic to post.----->

Hello everybody. Please, do you feel any subtle difference between these two words? Is there any circumstance/context where only one of them would be suitable? When you hear each of them, what's the first word you link it with in your mind? Thank you for your answers.

Please use one of the words in a sentence, with context, so we have an example to discuss.

I don't want to discuss one particular example, I want to hear about the general usage/connotations of each word and how much similar they actually are. I feel there's some slight difference between them, but I'm not sure if I'm right, so I'd like to hear your opinions first. Thank you.

The medicine only has an ephemeral/transitory/transient effect - Do all of them sound good to you? Does any of these imply something that the other doesn't?

Also I've found this sentence "The pictures reflect an interest in the ephemeral, impermanent, transient nature of the world." - Do you perceive any subtle difference between "ephemeral nature of the world" and "transient nature of the world" or is it just a kind of emphasis there?

Yes, there's a distinct difference.

There are very few exact synonyms in English: the only ones I can think of are someone/somebody; anyone/anybody; no-one/nobody. And even with those, some people see formality differences.

Dunno123 said:

Also I've found this sentence "The pictures reflect an interest in the ephemeral, impermanent, transient nature of the world." - Do you perceive any subtle difference between "ephemeral nature of the world" and "transient nature of the world" or is it just a kind of emphasis there?

I associate ephemeral with something that is fleeting, while transient/transitory means lasting for a short time/temporary.
The transient nature means that it changes from one state to another, i.e. is not permanent. The ephemeral nature means that it is short-lived.

While the different words share the meaning of short-lived, ephemeral does not mean temporary; it rather means short-lived (the original meaning (from Greek) means for a day, which is why it is used with insects that only live for a day or two).

The distinction between the two words is not something one can understand from a dictionary. You can only get an idea by seeing how the words are actually used. And my association of fleeting and ephemeral is not necessarily shared by others.👁 Smile :)

Loob said:

There are very few exact synonyms in English: the only ones I can think of are someone/somebody; anyone/anybody; no-one/nobody.

Garner's Modern American Usage (2003) is peppered with words the author labels "NEEDLESS VARIANT". His point is that "having two or more variant forms of a word is undesirable unless each one signals a distinct meaning," (p. xii).

It should be noted, though, that the "needless variants" are mainly (or perhaps exclusively) words whose stems correspond with the stems of the "endorsed variants". For example, aberrancy is said to be a needless variant of aberration; conversible of convertible; abolishment of abolition; and acceptancy of acceptance.

EStjarn said:

"His point is that "having two or more variant forms of a word is undesirable unless each one signals a distinct meaning," (p. xii).

Undesirable for whom? I see no loss in having more than one way of saying the same thing. And even if words start out as synonyms, people will soon invent distinctions between them (usually the same sort of people who in cases like these lament the existence of free variation). I would in fact say that many of the words Garner marks as "needless variants" sound less natural to me than the "endorsed variants", but that's not because they're redundant, but because they are simply not commonly used. On the other hand, I see both words of some pairs like "irrelevancy" and "irrelevance" as basically equally natural. And having the option to choose either might be useful in some contexts for parallelism; we could speak of "relevance and permanence" but "relevancy and redundancy", for example.
(I think I'll link one of my favorite essays on linguistic variation).