fleeting

Etymology

It is the present participle of the verb fleet used as an adjective, formed from English fleet + -ing.^[2][3][4][5] Etymonline takes it back to Old English flēotende (“floating, drifting”), the present participle of flēotan (“to float, swim”).^[6][7] That verb comes from Proto-Germanic *fleutaną,^[1][8] from Proto-Indo-European *pleud-, an extension of *pleu- (“to flow”).^[8][6][7][9] Its cognates include Old Frisian fliāta, Old Saxon fliotan, Dutch vlieten, Old High German fliozan, German fließen and Old Norse fljóta,^[8][10][5] as well as Lithuanian plū́sti (“to flow, stream”).^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Floating, or of a fish, swimming: in the Old English Genesis.^[2][3] Etymonline starts the word in the early 13th century, with "fickle, shifting, unstable", and derives that from the Old English participle.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The word follows the verb, which moved from floating and flowing to drifting (probably before 1200) and moving swiftly (probably about 1200),^[5] and it also came to mean gliding away like a stream, recorded from about 1200.^[6] Chaucer's participle still means "flowing" or "floating, aimless".^[11] In Middle English the participle could describe anything shifting, or a fickle person.^[2][3] Milton could still ask what hold could be had on "such a variable and fleeting conscience".^[2][3] The modern sense "existing only for a short time" appears in 1563,^[2][4][5][6] in the same decades as the verb's "fade, vanish" (1570s),^[6] and by 1609 it was used especially of life and time.^[2] The older senses were gone by the end of the 17th century.^[2][3] Ayto notes that the verb has now nearly died out and survives mainly in this participle,^[9] and Barnhart suggests that the adjective fleet, "swift", may be shortened from an unrecorded early use of it.^[5]

Timeline

• Old English – floating; of a fish, swimming (obsolete by 1578).^[2][3]
• c. 1200 – flowing, fluid (obsolete by 1697).^[2][3]
• c. 1225 – shifting, unstable; of a person, fickle (obsolete by 1650).^[2][6]
• 1563 – existing for a short time; transitory, in B. Googe's Eglogs.^[2][4][5]
• 1609 – passing swiftly by, chiefly of life or time, in Shakespeare's Sonnets.^[2]
• 1697 – gliding swiftly away, in Dryden's translation of Virgil.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Lasting only a short time; transitory, brief: She caught a fleeting look of surprise on his face.^[4][2][3]
2. Passing or gliding swiftly by, especially of time or life: the fleeting years of childhood.^[2][3][4]
3. (obsolete, Old English–1578) Floating; swimming.^[2][3]
4. (obsolete, c. 1225–1650) Shifting, unstable; of a person, fickle.^[2][3]
5. (obsolete, c. 1200–1697) Flowing; fluid.^[2][3]

Word family

• fleetingly
• fleetingness
• unfleeting

Related words

• fleet
• float
• flood
• flow
• fly
• fowl
• plover
• pluvial

Usage notes

The OED also enters several nouns spelled fleeting, each from a different fleet: the action of the verb that gives the adjective (from 1489); the skimming of a liquid, especially milk, from a verb meaning "to skim" (from about 1440), with the plural for skimmings or curds; a kind of trawling by groups of smacks tended by a steam vessel, from the fishing fleet (1884), which Wright's dialect dictionary records in East Anglia; and confinement in the Fleet Prison (1583–92).^[2][12]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
9. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
11. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
12. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)