Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The state or quality of being stable, especially.
- noun Resistance to change, deterioration, or displacement.
- noun Constancy of character or purpose; steadfastness.
- noun Reliability; dependability.
- noun The ability of an object, such as a ship or aircraft, to maintain equilibrium or resume its original, upright position after displacement, as by the sea or strong winds.
- noun Roman Catholic Church A vow committing a Benedictine monk to one monastery for life.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The state or property of being stable or firm; strength to stand and resist overthrow or change; stableness; firmness: as, the stability of a building, of a government, or of a system.
- noun Steadiness or firmness, as of purpose or resolution; fixity of character; steadfastness: the opposite of
fickleness and inconstancy. - noun Fixedness, as opposed to fluidity.
- noun Continuance in the same state; permanence; specifically, an additional or fourth vow of continuance in the same profession, and residence for life in the same monastery, imposed upon monks by the Benedictine rule.
- noun That character of equilibrium, or of a body in equilibrium, in virtue of which, if the position is disturbed, it tends to be restored.
- noun Synonyms and
- noun Immobility, permanence. See
stable . - noun Molecular stability, permanence of condition as regards the arrangement of the molecules: said of metals which, by repeated annealing, have been brought into a state in which further changes of dimensions or structure do not occur.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The state or quality of being stable, or firm; steadiness; stableness; firmness; strength to stand without being moved or overthrown
- noun Steadiness or firmness of character; firmness of resolution or purpose; the quality opposite to
fickleness ,irresolution , orinconstancy ; constancy; steadfastness. - noun Fixedness; -- as opposed to
fluidity .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The condition of being
stable or inequilibrium , and thusresistant tochange - noun The tendency to recover from
perturbations
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the quality of being enduring and free from change or variation
- noun a stable order (especially of society)
- noun the quality or attribute of being firm and steadfast
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Thus the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace was properly using the term "stability" in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve "stability" in Chile it was necessary to "destabilize" the country by overthrowing the elected government of Salvador Allende and installing the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Is the World Too Big to Fail? The Contours of Global Order 2011
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That I think the operations in about three quarters of that country will probably shift in the near future to what we call stability operations where the reconstruction that's so important for the long-term stability and prosperity of the Afghan people will take place and will enable other nongovernmental organizations and so forth to come in.
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Related Article Another Theater for S&P Drama Port Town's Prosecutors Probe S&P, Moody's Earlier Call to Downsize Giants of Ratings 08/10/2011 To give their ratings what they call "stability," the ratings firms tend to focus on static indicators that change slowly, like current-account balances.
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If you're benching, the chains are rattling and you kind of feel the weight changing, so you have to make sure your stability is there, and also you add a lot more weight to it.
Brian Orakpo, his Web site and chains Dan Steinberg 2010
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Washington says it will need more personnel and a bigger embassy to supervise the distribution of the increased aid to Pakistan, and more mercenaries (aka "contractors") to protect them and assure "stability" - a code word for the Pax Americana.
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It's ok, don't strain yourself ... its called stability, which is nowhere in sight and not likely for years.
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CHO: The NTSB will be conducting what it calls a stability test.
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Then after the regime fell, and the transition between maneuver combat to what they call stability and support operations, or the current counterinsurgency, there was a lot of movement by those that wanted to fight the coalition to confiscate, move, hide, move to and secure themselves these weapons for future use.
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Round two, now we're in what we call stability and support operations where we're dealing with, as you pointed out earlier, just these people running around without uniforms on, etcetera.
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We're thinking very seriously about moving into what we call stability operations in most of the country, where we'll work, focus on reconstruction efforts.
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