Evanescent: meaning and SAT practice
Evanescent (adjective) means: Tending to fade away or disappear quickly and completely.
Evanescent in a sentence
The evanescent morning mist vanished as soon as the sun rose higher.
Similar: fleeting, transient, ephemeral, brief. Opposite: permanent, lasting.
SAT-style practice: what does “evanescent” most nearly mean?
The evanescent morning mist vanished as soon as the sun rose higher.
As used in the sentence, “evanescent” most nearly means
- harsh
- spacious
- colloquial
- fleeting
Show the answer
Answer: D. “evanescent” means: Tending to fade away or disappear quickly and completely. “fleeting” is the closest match in this sentence. The other choices are real SAT-level words, but none of them carries that meaning here.
On the digital SAT this is the “Words in Context” skill, about 7 of the 54 Reading and Writing questions. The test asks what a word means as used in the passage, so a word’s most common meaning is not always the answer. More of these, with full explanations, are on SAT Words in Context practice questions.
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