[f. as TRANSIENT: see -ENCE.]

1

  1.  The action or fact of soon passing away; also, the condition or state of being transient, transiency.

2

1745.  Brooke, An Anthem, iv. Here, from time and transience won, Beauty has her charms resign’d.

3

a. 1822.  Shelley, Ess. & Lett. (1852), I. 184. A being … whose ‘thoughts wander through eternity,’ disclaiming alliance with transience and decay.

4

1849.  Tait’s Mag., XVI. 8. Shadows … glide away, in transience fleet.

5

1875.  Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III. 126. Regarding the transience of pleasure as a proof of its unreality.

6

1905.  Westm. Gaz., 22 April, 12/3. Any other explanation of the transience of French Protestantism.

7

  2.  The state or quality of being ‘transient’ in sense 2; = TRANSCENDENCE 1 b.

8

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.

9