transient

Etymology

From Late Latin transiēnt- (for classical transeunt-), stem of transiēns, present participle of transire (“to go over, to pass”).

adj

1. Passing or disappearing with time; transitory.
   a transient pleasure
2. Remaining for only a brief time.
   a transient view of a landscape
   a transient disease
3. (physics) Decaying with time, especially exponentially.
4. (mathematics, stochastic processes, of a state) having a positive probability of being left and never being visited again.
5. Occasional; isolated; one-off
6. Passing through; passing from one person to another.
7. (music) Intermediate.
8. (philosophy) Operating beyond itself; having an external effect.

noun

1. Something that is transient.
2. (physics) A transient phenomenon, especially an electric current; a very brief surge.
3. (acoustics) A relatively loud, non-repeating signal in an audio waveform that occurs very quickly, such as the attack of a snare drum.
4. A person who passes through a place for a short time; a traveller; a migrant worker.
   Then, within the space of a few months, there were more transients than there were locals, and the imbalance seemed morally wrong. 1996, Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster, paperback edition, Virago Press, page 3
5. A homeless person.
6. (programming) A module that generally remains in memory only for a short time.
   The overhead in loading transients is a big time-waster. 1978, Computerworld, volume 12, number 25, page 26
   These areas function to single thread supervisor routines that are loaded as needed. The Logical Transient Area (LTA) processes $$B transients. 1990, Gary A. Stotts, DOS/VSE: Introduction to the Operating System, page 102
   Like with setting and getting transients, WordPress packages a delete_transient() function for deleting a transient from the database. 2020, Brad Williams, Justin Tadlock, John James Jacoby, Professional WordPress Plugin Development, page 102
7. (Philippines) A homestay.