lability

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“
Why he refused to state that publicly before the Paulson Plan won the day is unclear, but it suggests the man Bush chose to succeed Alan Greenspan was chosen for his lability not his ability or his backbone.

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Definitions (3)

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  1. The quality of being labile; liability to lapse or err. Coleridge. See quotation under labile. [Rare.]
  2. Instability, as, in chem., the quality of being easily broken down to form simpler chemical compounds or even elements. By combining these two methods there is induced a “nuclear lability,” which renders these eggs susceptible to the influence of carbon dioxide as a provocative of cleavage. Jour. Roy. Micros. Soc. April, 1904, p. 188.

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Examples (40)

  • Problems also can develop at home when parents do not understand all the effects epilepsy can have (e.g., cognitive difficulties, emotional lability, and attention problems). —  Brain Blogger
  • Mood swings, mood lability (mood swings or significant changeability of a person's overall state), especially when disengaged from a person or a project. —  BC Bloggers
  • The magnitude of this increase depends both on the concentration and on the lability of the complexes. —  CiteULike: Everyone's library
  • The range of his thinking, documented in this volume, demonstrates a consistent ability to identify new phenomena-the obsolescence of the bureaucratic state, the end of Marxism, the lability of nations, the resurgence of religion, and the ongoing vitality of lived traditions. —  TELOSscope: The Telos Press blog
  • Moreover, lateral auditory cortex showed greater attentional lability than medial regions. —  PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles
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Etymologies (1)

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. = Old French labilete, from Middle Latin labilita(t-)s, instability, from Latin labilis, apt to slip: see labile.
 

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