The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Transitory \Tran"si*to*ry\, a. [L. transitorius: cf. F.
   transitoire. See Transient.]
   Continuing only for a short time; not enduring; fleeting;
   evanescent.
   [1913 Webster]

         Comfort and succor all those who, in this transitory
         life, are in trouble.                    --Bk. of Com.
                                                  Prayer.
   [1913 Webster]

         It was not the transitory light of a comet, which
         shines and glows for a wile, and then . . . vanishes
         into nothing.                            --South.
   [1913 Webster]

   Transitory action (Law), an action which may be brought in
      any county, as actions for debt, and the like; -- opposed
      to local action. --Blackstone. Bouvier.
      [1913 Webster]

   Syn: transient; short-lived; brief. See Transient.
        [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

transitory
    adj 1: lasting a very short time; "the ephemeral joys of
           childhood"; "a passing fancy"; "youth's transient
           beauty"; "love is transitory but it is eternal";
           "fugacious blossoms" [syn: ephemeral, passing,
           short-lived, transient, transitory, fugacious]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

97 Moby Thesaurus words for "transitory":
   able to adapt, adaptable, adjustable, alterable, alterative, brief,
   brittle, capricious, changeable, checkered, circumforaneous,
   corruptible, deciduous, discursive, divagatory, drifting, dying,
   ephemeral, errant, evanescent, ever-changing, fading, fickle,
   fleeting, flexible, flitting, floating, fluid, fly-by-night,
   flying, footloose, footloose and fancy-free, fragile, frail,
   fugacious, fugitive, gadding, gypsy-like, gypsyish, impermanent,
   impetuous, impulsive, inconstant, insubstantial, kaleidoscopic,
   landloping, malleable, many-sided, meandering, metamorphic,
   migrational, migratory, mobile, modifiable, momentary, mortal,
   movable, mutable, nomad, nomadic, nondurable, nonpermanent,
   nonuniform, passing, perishable, permutable, plastic, protean,
   proteiform, rambling, ranging, resilient, roaming, roving, rubbery,
   shifting, short-lived, short-term, straggling, straying, strolling,
   supple, temporal, temporary, traipsing, transient, transitive,
   transmigratory, transubstantiate, undurable, unenduring, unstable,
   vagabond, vagrant, variable, volatile, wandering



Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):

TRANSITORY. That which lasts but a short time, as transitory facts that
which may be laid in different places, as a transitory action.