mutability

American  

[myoo-tuh-bil-i-tee] / ˌmyu təˈbɪl ɪ ti /

Rarely mutableness

noun

1. the quality of being liable to undergo change or alteration.

   With the realization of cancer's mutability, they now fear it might not be the same disease in everyone.

2. the quality of constantly changing; transient or transitory quality.

   National borders can have a permanence that contrasts with the almost infinite mutability of the cultures contained within them.

3. Computers. (in object-oriented programming) the characteristic of an object having properties whose values can change while the object itself maintains a unique identity.

   The mutability of the "sales report" object allows properties like sales period and salesperson to be updated without losing the reference to the report elsewhere in the application.

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Other Word Forms

• hypermutability noun
• hypermutableness noun
• nonmutability noun
• nonmutableness noun

Etymology

Origin of mutability

First recorded in 1400–50; from French mutabilité, from Latin mūtābilitāt-, stem of mūtābilitās “changeability,” equivalent to mūtābili(s) “changeable” ( mutable ( def. ) ) + -tās -ty ² ( def. )

Example Sentences

The mutability is a lovely parallel for the filmgoing itself.

From Los Angeles Times • May 18, 2025

The effect is of a delirious mutability, in which the poems coalesce almost in spite of themselves.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 7, 2023

The subjects’ mutability echoes the local artist’s slippery style, which incorporates collage and shifts easily from realism to expressionism.

From Washington Post • Mar. 24, 2023

Indeed, part of the point of the Zwirner show seems to be to demonstrate various ways that mutability operates in Gonzalez-Torres’s art.

From New York Times • Feb. 2, 2023

The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc.

From "1984" by George Orwell

Related Words

• anxiety
• fluctuation
• insecurity
• uncertainty
• volatility
• vulnerability
• weakness