Fleeting

How to spell fleeting

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fleeting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fleeting mean?

1. adjectiveLasting for only a very short time; passing quickly.

Fleeting in a sentence

• She caught a fleeting glimpse of the celebrity through the car window.

• His interest in the project was fleeting and faded within a week.

Where does fleeting come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows out of the Old English verb 'fleotan', meaning 'to float, drift, or move swiftly', which is closely tied to 'fleon', meaning 'to flee or run away'. The Middle English verb 'fleten' carried the sense of gliding quickly past, and from it came the present participle 'fleeting', describing something that passes by before you can hold onto it. By the late 1500s the word had settled into its modern adjectival meaning of lasting only a very short time. It belongs to the same Germanic family as 'fleet', both the noun for a group of ships and the old adjective meaning 'swift', and that shared idea of rapid motion is the thread running through them all. The double 'e' is the spelling point worth remembering, mirroring the long vowel in 'flee'.

How the word is built

• flee (from Old English fleon: to run away)
• -t-
• -ing (adjective from present participle)