a. Also 7 -atious. [f. L. fugāci-, fugax (f. fugĕre to flee) + -OUS.]
1. Apt to flee away or flit. a. Of immaterial things: Tending to disappear, of short duration; evanescent, fleeting, transient, fugitive.
1634. Rainbow, Labour (1635), A ij. Fugatious words, which escape the eares pursuit.
a. 1677. Barrow, Serm., Wks. 1716, II. 53. The slipping away of a thing most fugacious and slippery.
1722. Wollaston, Relig. Nat., ix. 206. Did he come into the world only to make his way through the press, amidst many justlings and hard struggles, with at best only a few deceitful, little, fugacious pleasures interspersed, and so go out of it again?
1774. Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, xli. III. 433. I owe this information to the manuscript papers of these fugacious anecdotes.
1817. W. Taylor, in Monthly Mag., XLIV. 234. There is in the affection of poetic readers a something very fugacious.
1855. Ht. Martineau, Autobiog. (1877), II. 226. The fugacious nature of life and time.
1865. Mill, Exam. Hamilton, 203. Colours, tastes, smells … being, in comparison, fugacious.
b. Of persons: † Ready to run away. Also humorously (of persons), fleeing; (of things) slippery. rare.
1651. J. F[reake], Agrippa’s Occ. Philos., 557. The most fugatious of all the Gods.
1872. Howells, Wedd. Journ., 81. The oily slices of fugacious potatoes slipping about in their shallow dish and skilfully evading pursuit.
1885. Lizzie W. Champney, Professor Sarcophagus, in Harper’s Mag., LXX. Feb., 367/1. Aunt Debby chuckled away to herself at the retrospect of her own fugacious figure, and it was a long time before I could bring her back to the thread of the story.
c. Of a material substance: Volatile.
1671. J. Webster, Metallogr., viii. 126. Paracelsus confesseth, ‘… this primum ens, that it is a fugacious spirit, as yet consisting in volatility, as an Infant lies hid in the womb of the woman.
1684. trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., VI. 198. The fugacious poison departs as the Serum breaks out.
1794. G. Adams, Nat. & Exp. Philos., I. xi. 433. There is no one who has enriched this subject more than Dr. Priestley, or has analyzed the fugacious element of air with more success.
1823. Mechanic’s Mag., No. 10. 160. From the highly fugacious nature of that part of coffee on which its fine flavour depends.
2. Bot. and Zool. Falling or fading early; soon cast off. Cf. CADUCOUS 1.
1750. G. Hughes, Barbadoes, 35. ‘An immoderate Use of crude fugacious Fruits, unwholesome Food, and Meats of difficult Digestion; all which, by stimulating the Guts, will likewise occasion a Diarrhœa.’
1796. Withering, Brit. Plants (ed. 3), IV. 288. Curtain white, delicate, fugacious, hanging in fragments at the edge of the pileus, but soon vanishing after it is gathered.
1796. C. Marshall, Garden., ii. (1813), 16. With this minuteness, it [seed] may be extremely fugacious by its slight adhesion to the plant.
1874. M. Cooke, Fungi (1875), ii. 20. In some Agarics the ring is very fugacious, or absent altogether.
1877–84. F. E. Hulme, Wild Fl., Ser. I. p. xiv. Petals … very fugacious.
Hence Fugaciously adv., Fugaciousness.
1664. Evelyn, Kal. Hort., Introd. 56. Well therefore did … Columella put his Gard’ner in mind of the fugaciousness of the Seasons.
1811. A. T. Thomson, Lond. Disp. (1830), 1011. Sulphuretted hydrogen is known to be contained in water … by its reddening the infusion of litmus fugaciously.
1821. New Monthly Mag., I. 160. The utter inanity and fugaciousness of all mortal grandeur.
1875. H. C. Wood, Therap. (1879), 116. The volatility of ammonia and the extreme fugaciousness of its action.
