Page 523 - Word Power Made Easy: The Complete Handbook for Building a Superior Vocabulary

which money keeps owing to us, and no one ever turns o the spigot. Other words from

the same root, fluo, to ow, are uid, in uence, con uence (a “ owing together”), fluent
(the words flow smoothly), etc.
Opulent is from Latin opulentus, wealthy. No other English words derive from this root.

2. doing and feeling

If you watch a furious athletic event, and you get tired, though the athletes expend all
the energy—that’s vicarious fatigue.
If your friend goes on a bender, and as you watch him absorb one drink after another,
you begin to feel giddy and stimulated, that’s vicarious intoxication.
If you watch a mother in a motion picture or dramatic play su er horribly at the death of
her child, and you go through the same agony, that’s vicarious torment.
You can experience an emotion, then, in two ways: rsthand, through actual

participation; or vicariously, by becoming empathetically involved in another person’s
feelings.
Some people, for example, lead essentially dull and colorless lives. Through their
children, through reading or attending the theater, however, they can experience all the
emotions felt by others whose lives move along at a swift, exciting pace. These people live

at second hand; they live vicariously.

3. time is relative

Elephants and turtles live almost forever; human beings in the United States have a life
expectancy in general of sixty-eight to seventy-six years (though the gradual conquest of

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disease is constantly lengthening our span); dogs live from seven to ten years; and some
insects exist for only a few hours or days.
One such short-lived creature is the day y, which in Greek was called ephemera. Hence
anything so short-lived, so unenduring that it scarcely seems to outlast the day, may be
called ephemeral.
A synonym of ephemeral is evanescent (ev-Ə-NES′-Ənt), eeting, staying for a remarkably

short time, vanishing. Something intangible, like a feeling, may be called evanescent; it’s
here, and before you can quite comprehend it, it’s gone—vanished.
The noun is evanescence (ev′-Ə-NES′-Əns); the verb is to evanesce (ev-Ə-NES′).
Evanescent is built on the pre x e- (ex-), out, the root vanesco, to vanish, and the

adjective suffix -ent.
The su x -esce often, but not always, means begin to. -Escent may mean becoming or
beginning to. Thus:

adolescent—beginning to grow up;
beginning to become an adult
evanesce—begin to vanish
convalesce—begin to get well after illness