"HE USED WORDS LIKE EPHEMERAL"

In telling me about his career, one of my clients told me about the most impressive person he'd known. My client had been selected for a prestigious position and after he met his assistant he learned that the assistant had also been considered for the job. When he learned this, he feared that the assistant would be the cause of much dissension. Instead, the assistant did everything he could to make my client successful and they became friends. When my client left the position five years later, the assistant was given the promotion.

My client said that after getting to know the assistant, he felt the assistant was more qualified than himself and should have been given the position previously. He said, "He was a real intellectual; he used words like ephemeral!" I chuckled and my client asked if I knew the word. I gave him my definition: "Short-lived, momentary, brief, transitory, fleeting." He said, "Use it in a sentence."

As we had been listening to Mario Lanza singing Valencia earlier that day, I said, "Before there were phonograph records, music was an ephemeral art."

After hearing about his friend, I said, "He must be the most magnanimous person you've ever known."

My client said, "He would have liked that word!"