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mutable

[myoo-tuh-buhl]

Example Sentences Origin

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adjective

liable or subject to change or alteration.

given to changing; constantly changing; fickle or inconstant: the mutable ways of fortune.

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English < Latin mūtābilis, equivalent to mūtā(re) to change + -bilis -ble

Related forms

mu·ta·bil·i·ty, mu·ta·ble·ness, noun

mu·ta·bly, adverb

hy·per·mu·ta·bil·i·ty, noun

hy·per·mu·ta·ble, adjective

hy·per·mu·ta·ble·ness, noun

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hy·per·mu·ta·b·ly, adverb

non·mu·ta·bil·i·ty, noun

non·mut·a·ble, adjective

non·mut·a·ble·ness, noun

non·mut·a·b·ly, adverb

un·mu·ta·ble, adjective

COLLAPSE

Synonyms
1. changeable, variable. 2. unstable, vacillating, unsettled, wavering, unsteady.

Antonyms
2. stable.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Mutable is always a great word to know.

So is ort. Does it mean:

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

a fool or simpleton; ninny.

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Example Sentences

The reality, however, is that works of art are more mutable than is usually acknowledged.

The country is so vast and so mutable that any attempt to describe it seems facile.

He is interested in clothes as mutable materials that communicate ideas.

EXPAND

The reality, however, is that works of art are more mutable than is usually acknowledged.

The country is so vast and so mutable that any attempt to describe it seems facile.

He is interested in clothes as mutable materials that communicate ideas.

The band's membership was always, to put it mildly, somewhat mutable.

These factors-in good news for humans at the low end of the social ladder-may be mutable.

Thus, since our laws are infinitely mutable and can be changed at any time, by definition they are incapable of ownership.

Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right.

Now scientists report that the brain is even more mutable than suspected.

But the mutable tubercle bacillus proved an elusive target, becoming resistant to each successive drug tried.

It means that sovereignty and national borders are mutable.

Plasmodium falciparum has a multistage life cycle and highly mutable genes.

Now they tend to see the sand as shifting and lines as mutable.

The central theme is change, and the message that everything is mutable.

But today's global auto industry may instead demand the eclectic and the mutable.

He's been a fixture, but a mutable one, welcome in any number of places but not strong enough to make any of them a real home.

Vickery brilliantly shows that these boundaries were fluid and mutable.

To dip into his dictionary today is to be reminded even more forcefully of how fluid and mutable our language is.

Biographers are forever readjusting our sense of the fantastically mutable relationship between an individual and a society.

Colby makes serious sport of language, showing its basis in the body's impulses and its mutable meanings.

On the lam, the daughter of doomed immigrants becomes a mutable creature who only partly swallows her survivor guilt.

Mantel means to suggest that history itself is ever mutable and difficult to grasp.

But then, mutable fashions are not exactly groundbreaking, having had precursors on international runways.

And her temperament and physical appearance seemed as mutable as her voice.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

mutable (ˈmjuːtəb^əl)

—*adj*
1.	able to or tending to change
2.	astrology cardinal Compare fixed of or relating to four of the signs of the zodiac, Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces, which are associated with the quality of adaptability

[C14: from Latin mūtābilis fickle, from mūtāre to change]

muta'bility

—n

'mutableness

—n

'mutably

—*adv*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

mutable

late 14c., "liable to change," from O.Prov. mutable, from L. mutabilis "changeable," from mutare "to change," from PIE base *mei- "to change, go, move" (cf. Skt. methati "changes, alternates, joins, meets;" Avestan mitho "perverted, false;" L. meare "to go, pass," migrare "to move from one place to another;"

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O.C.S. mite "alternately;" Czech mijim "to go by, pass by," Pol. mijam "avoid;" Goth. maidjan "to change;" Hitt. mutai- "to be changed into"); with derivatives refering to the exchange of goods and services within a society as regulated by custom or law (cf. L. mutuus "done in exchange," munus "service performed for the community, duty, work"). Related: Mutability.

COLLAPSE

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Related Words

Gemini mutable sign Pisces

quadruplicity Sagittarius Virgo

Matching Quote

"Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to reverence; without losing his reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal Cause."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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