<p>Fame is ----; today's rising star is all too soon tomorrow's washed-up has-been.</p>
<p>I was stuck between two choices: transitory and spontaneous.
The correct answer is transitory. But why isn't it spontaneous? Doesn't plugging in "spontaneous" suggest that fame is unpredictable: a rising star could easily become "washed-up"??</p>
<p>The question is from Barron's btw.</p>
<p>Your’e “forcing” your own subjective interpretation. Don’t do that. You automatically assume that spontaneous is synonymous with unpredicability, but while an unpredictable person may often do something spontaneous, “spontaneous” in itself does not necessarily mean unpredictable. It means something more along the lines of doing something instinctively or impulsively or randomly. </p>
<p>But even if you were to argue that spontaneous means the same as unpredictable in this case, you could argue that the answer you chose is illogical because fame is not necessarily unpredictable, because if a star of today is a washed-up nobody tomorrow, then fame is indeed predictable in that you can predict that a star will often become a nobody. </p>
<p>Conversely, transitory, meaning temporary or short-lived, makes more sense because if a person is a star today but a nobody tomorrow, then his fame is short-lived or temporary. </p>
<p>Not only that, but collocation-wise, we rarely say that an abstract noun such as fame is spontaneous. A person or an action is usually spontaneous.</p>
<p>Hope this helps. GL</p>