Fugacious

Fugacious. Not a word you hear bandied about, it means fleeting or transitory, like snow in Bexhill. The trouble is, it does not convey anything about its meaning in the word. I'm not talking onomatopoeia here - these are words that sound like the sound they're describing, 'thwack' 'cuckoo' or 'buzz' being common examples. I'm talking about a word that somehow conveys its meaning in the way that word sounds. I found a blog 'Fiction University' by Janice Hardy and she has this to say, giving the word 'frumpy' as an example: - 
'Frumpy sounds like what it is. You don't have to know its definition to get a good idea of its meaning. A quick trip to the thesaurus got me these other words that could have been used instead:  

badly dressed, baggy, blowsy, dingy, drab, dull, homely, old-fashioned, outdated, plain, poorly dressed, shabby, sloppy, stodgy, unfashionable, unkempt, unstylish 

None of them convey what frumpy does, because the sound of the word is so perfectly aligned with what it means.' 

 

Not Fugacious. Transitory has a nice fleeting sound to it, but fugacious has a dig-your-heels-in, I'm-here-for-keeps feel to it. This comes from the Latin fugere meaning 'to flee' so it's been the wrong word for ages. Maybe that's why no-one talks about the fugacious blossom in spring or my fugacious attempts to lose weight. 

 

Mind you, I didn't like the thesaurus string of words aligned to frumpy, as I feel all of those at the moment. Something must be done.

 

Busy day, achieved lots, took Evie to her gymnastics class, home to sausages, salad & JP, glass of wine. Music from Yes, Nad Sylvan & Genesis. Nice