Transient means lasting only a very short time. A transient effect, transient population, transient symptoms.
In medicine it is precise and reassuring: transient symptoms pass without treatment. As a noun in America a transient is somebody with no fixed home, which is a much heavier use of a light word. The Latin means going across.
1adjectivetransientLasting only a very short time.
“Fame on social media is often transient, and most stars are forgotten within a year.”
transient is a quality.
Latin transiens comes from transire, to go across — trans plus ire, to go. Transit is a relative.
Latin
transiēnt-
English, today
transient
Built from
From Latin transiēnt- (for classical transeunt-), stem of transiēns, present participle of transeo (“to go over, to pass”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA