Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The state or quality of being stable, especially:
- n. Resistance to change, deterioration, or displacement.
- n. Constancy of character or purpose; steadfastness.
- n. Reliability; dependability.
- n. 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.
- n. Roman Catholic Church A vow committing a Benedictine monk to one monastery for life.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. 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.
- n. Steadiness or firmness, as of purpose or resolution; fixity of character; steadfastness: the opposite of fickleness and inconstancy.
- n. Fixedness, as opposed to fluidity.
- n. 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.
- n. That character of equilibrium, or of a body in equilibrium, in virtue of which, if the position is disturbed, it tends to be restored. The term is especially used in this sense with reference to ships and floating bodies, in which the distance of the center of gravity below the metacenter is the measure- of the stability. This may be considered as the difference between the distance of the center of flotation from the metacenter, called the stability of figure, and the distance of the center of gravity from the metacenter, called the stability of load. The stability under sail is also considered.
- n. Synonyms and
- n. Immobility, permanence. See stable.
- n. 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.
Wiktionary
- n. The condition of being stable or in equilibrium, and thus resistant to change
- n. The tendency to recover from perturbations
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The state or quality of being stable, or firm; steadiness; stableness; firmness; strength to stand without being moved or overthrown
- n. Steadiness or firmness of character; firmness of resolution or purpose; the quality opposite to
fickleness ,irresolution , orinconstancy ; constancy; steadfastness. - n. Fixedness; -- as opposed to
fluidity .
WordNet 3.0
- n. the quality of being enduring and free from change or variation
- n. a stable order (especially of society)
- n. the quality or attribute of being firm and steadfast
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Old French stabilité, from Latin root of stabilitas ("firmness, steadfastness"), from stabilis ("steadfast, firm") (Wiktionary)
Examples
“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.”
The Huffington Post: Is the World Too Big to Fail? The Contours of Global Order
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It's ok, don't strain yourself ... its called stability, which is nowhere in sight and not likely for years.”
“CHO: The NTSB will be conducting what it calls a stability test.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘stability’.
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JURI - patent law
admissible, absolute grounds ..., abstract, acquisition of th..., action for revoca..., admissibility of ..., acceptable, allowable, appeal to a court, appellant, applicant, application and 338 more...
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EU Buzz - ALL words and expressions
A combined list of
1. EU Buzz - single words
2. EU Buzz - collocations
3. EU Buzz - the 100 most active
collocation constituentsabsorption capacity, absorption rate, acceding country, accession candidate, accession countries, accession country, accession criteria, accession cycle, accession negotia..., accession partner..., accession priorities, accession treaty and 2650 more...
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EN - academic vocabulary
Use these and get promoted
abandon, abandonment, abnormally, abstract, abstraction, abstractly, abstracts, academia, academic, academically, academics, academies and 3119 more...
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AFET - diplomacy
broker a peace ac..., client state, deadlocked peace ..., embassy, freeze, goodwill ambassador, hinterland, interfere in dome..., intervene personally, maintain technica..., mediation, no business as usual and 670 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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EU Buzz - Lisbon Treaty
All words of the Lisbon Treaty
(Persons' names, foreign and grammatical words have been eliminated, MWEs have been split up into individual words. Capitalization has been retained if r...conferral, stateless, person, voting, right, subsidiarity, Latvia, Malta, Slovenia, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia and 2614 more...
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EU Buzz - single words (1+2+3)
1. Strictly EU terms with special European meaning used only in the EU
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2. Keywords central to the understanding of the EU (people working for the EU are usually able to give thematic...acceleration, action, additionality, administrator, agenda, agricultural, agri-environmental, agriflation, agri-food, applicant, approach, assent and 1325 more...
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EU Buzz - 100 most active collocation...
The 100 most frequent constituents of EU collocations. People working for the EU are able to complete any of these words to a multiple-word expression with ease. Try it out if you are one! For a gr...
accession, acquis, act, action, agenda, agreement, aid, area, assistance, association, base, budget and 88 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
thunderfuck, incredible, merp, sara, flopparoo, smother, fugly, buer, plum, canny, nefelibata, cuntbucket and 2434 more... -
Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
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ESL Academic Word List
This is a list of academic words for students learning English as a Second or Foreign Language. It includes 570 word families that often appear in academic texts. It does not include words that are...
collapse, depression, colleagues, invoked, levy, nonetheless, likewise, so-called, ongoing, conceived, forthcoming, integrity and 558 more...
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my dictionary
able, abnormally, abroad, absent, abstract, acceptable, acceptance, access, accessible, accession, according to, account and 4551 more...
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Learned words
Words which are highly likely to be found in the work of learned writers.
ailurophile, labyrinthine, lagniappe, colleague, anechoic, reglets, fluctuations, scalar, implicit, constitute, mortification, ambassadors and 629 more...
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nuwerdna's Words
smegma, defenestration, nubile, zeitgeist, stochastic, ergodic, stability, maudlin, recursion, aversion, agent, set and 239 more...
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Values List
In coaching or psychology work, it is often postulated that people have a personal list of abstract, subjectively defined, emotional concepts that drive them (often called 'values') to answer the b...
honesty, stability, justice, respect, wealth, truth, compassion, creativity, resourcefulness, health, courage, adventure and 66 more...
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EU - What was Joao talking about in 2...
The 100 most frequent words in Joao Barroso's "State of the European Union" address in September 2011
act, adopted, already, approach, area, bank, believe, billion, bonds, built, capital, citizens and 87 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for stability.
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