[f. as prec.: see -ENCY.]
1. The quality or condition of being transient; brevity of existence; transitoriness.
1652. Gaule, Magastrom., 96. How is it possible there should either be any … observation on the artists and art, in a transiency so imperceptible?
1805. W. Taylor, in Robberds, Mem. (1843), II. 98. A more eager popularity, like that of the ‘Minstrel’s Lay,’ would be symptomatic of transiency.
1812. Coleridge, in Lit. Rem. (1836), I. 381. From their minuteness and transiency not calculated to stiffen or inflate the individual.
1831. Blackw. Mag., XXIX. 522. They try to perpetuate the transiency of emotions.
1905. F. Young, Sands of Pleasure, I. v. Vaguely conscious of the transiency and instability of material life.
2. A transient thing or being. rare.
1866. Carlyle, Edw. Irving, 318. Poor sickly transiencies that we are, coveting we know not what!
1881. Palgrave, Vis. Eng., 200. On the trivialest transiencies fix’d, or plucking for fruit Dead-sea Apples and ashes of sin, more brute than the brute.
