“Ephemera” (ih-FEM-er-uh) – from the Greek for “lasting only a day” – are items designed to be useful or important for only a short time. The singular form of the word is “ephemeron” (ih-FEM-uh-ron).
Example (as used by J. Courtney Sullivan in a New York Times review of Parrworld: Objects and Postcards by Martin Parr): “‘I have a very strong collecting gene,’ says the British photographer Parr, whose trove of ephemera… includes dozens of Sadam Hussein wristwatches.”
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