Short-lived means lasting only a very little while. A short-lived success.
It is used of fashions, ceasefires and enthusiasms rather than of people. Short-lived is properly said with the vowel of life rather than of live, though nobody minds.
1adjectiveshort-livedLasting only a very little while.
“The short-lived truce collapsed inside a week.”
short-lived is a quality.
Short plus lived, from life plus -ed; Middle English had short-livi in the same sense.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker-
Middle English
schort
English
short
English, today
short-lived
Built from
From short + lived, equivalent to short + life + -ed. Compare Middle English short-livi, sort-levi (“short-lived”). short comes from Middle English schort. From Middle English schort, short, from Old English sċeort, sċort (“short”), from Proto-West Germanic skurt, from Proto-Germanic skurtaz (“short”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)ker-. a doublet of shirt and skirt and curt. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA