mutability


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mu·ta·ble

 (myo͞o′tə-bəl)
adj.
1.
a. Capable of or subject to change or alteration.
b. Prone to frequent change; inconstant: mutable weather patterns.
2. Tending to undergo genetic mutation: a mutable organism; a mutable gene.

[Middle English, from Latin mūtābilis, from mūtāre, to change; see mutate.]

mu′ta·bil′i·ty n.
mu′ta·bly adv.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun1.mutability - the quality of being capable of mutation
changeability, changeableness - the quality of being changeable; having a marked tendency to change; "the changeableness of the weather"
alterability - the quality of being alterable
vicissitude - mutability in life or nature (especially successive alternation from one condition to another)
immutability, immutableness, fixity - the quality of being incapable of mutation; "Darwin challenged the fixity of species"
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
Translations

mutability

[ˌmjuːtəˈbɪlɪtɪ] Nmutabilidad f
Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

mutability

nWandlungsfähigkeit f, → Mutabilität f (spec)
Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007
References in classic literature ?
These considerations, and the influence of personal confidences and attachments, would be likely to induce every new President to promote a change of men to fill the subordinate stations; and these causes together could not fail to occasion a disgraceful and ruinous mutability in the administration of the government.
By necessitating a change of men, in the first office of the nation, it would necessitate a mutability of measures.
Why, it may be asked, have all the most eminent living naturalists and geologists rejected this view of the mutability of species?
Although naturalists very properly demand a full explanation of every difficulty from those who believe in the mutability of species, on their own side they ignore the whole subject of the first appearance of species in what they consider reverent silence.
He did indeed account somewhat unfairly for this sudden change; for besides some hard and unjust surmises concerning female fickleness and mutability, he began to suspect that he owed this want of civility to his want of horses; a sort of animals which, as they dirty no sheets, are thought in inns to pay better for their beds than their riders, and are therefore considered as the more desirable company; but Mrs Whitefield, to do her justice, had a much more liberal way of thinking.
The mutability in the public councils arising from a rapid succession of new members, however qualified they may be, points out, in the strongest manner, the necessity of some stable institution in the government.
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but mutability!
This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner life.
Pickwick, 'on the strange mutability of human affairs.'
Meanwhile, historian Joanne Pope Melish presents an analysis of the relationship between racism and republicanism in a two pronged essay on the mutability of the marks of servility in "white Negroes" in the nineteenth-century US and enslaved whites in the Barbary states of North Africa.
The editor notes that his choice of poems tends to bias the selection 'against Spenser's concern with mutability' (5), but mutability has crept in unawares spoiling 'the gentle Poets rime'.