EPHEMERAL and PROTRACTED are antonyms. EPHEMERAL means brief and short-lived. For example, modern clothing and hair styles are deliberately designed to be EPHEMERAL. In contrast, PROTRACTED means prolonged and therefore lasting for a long time. For example, during the early 1930s a PROTRACTED drought in the Great Plains caused widespread crop failures, created massive dust storms, and forced hundreds of thousands of “Okies” to migrate to California.
I’d like to issue a Vocabulary Alert for PROTRACTED. Unlike EPHEMERAL, PROTRACTED has thus far NOT been a correct answer for a vocabulary in context question. Instead, it has become a favorite WRONG answer! For example, the stories of the Native Hawaiian people PERMEATE or spread throughout their culture; they do not PROTRACT Hawaiian culture.
EPHEMERAL – brief; short-lived; fleeting
PROTRACTED – prolonged; lasting a long time