mutability
Americannoun
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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.
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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.
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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.
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
First-time feature director Rachael Abigail Holder’s cinematic postcard to loss and mutability is an attractive tableau of aged brownstones and new hot spots, canopied streets and hilly parks.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 5, 2025
The mutability is a lovely parallel for the filmgoing itself.
From Los Angeles Times • May 18, 2025
As Hobbs has argued, the mutability of racial self-identification open to racially ambiguous people “reveals the bankruptcy of the race idea” while “offering a searing critique of racism” and “disarming racialized thinking.”
From New York Times • Apr. 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
The fourth R of gene physiology, essential to both the survival and mutability of organisms, might be “repair.”
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
