1. The action or fact of soon passing away; also, the condition or state of being transient, transiency.
1745. Brooke, An Anthem, iv. Here, from time and transience won, Beauty has her charms resign’d.
a. 1822. Shelley, Ess. & Lett. (1852), I. 184. A being … whose ‘thoughts wander through eternity,’ disclaiming alliance with transience and decay.
1849. T. Blackburne, in Tait’s Mag., XVI. 8/1. Shadows … glide away, in transience fleet.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III. 126. Regarding the transience of pleasure as a proof of its unreality.
1905. Westm. Gaz., 22 April, 12/3. Any other explanation of the transience of French Protestantism.
2. The state or quality of being ‘transient’ in sense 2; = TRANSCENDENCE 1 b.
1882–3. Schaff’s Encycl. Relig. Knowl., I. 370. [Calvinism] emphasizes at once the transience of God beyond, and the immanence of God within, the world.
