INSTABILITY • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Instability

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/ˌɪnstəbˈɪlɪti/ Listen

noun

Instability n. (pl. instabilities)

The quality or condition of being unstable; lack of stability, firmness, or steadiness; liability to give way or to fail; insecurity; precariousness; as, the instability of a building.

Lack of determination of fixedness; inconstancy; fickleness; mutability; changeableness; as, instability of character, temper, custom, etc.

Synonyms: Inconstancy; fickleness; changeableness; wavering; unsteadiness; unstableness.

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Etymology of 'Instability'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Instability" Quotes from Famous Books

... of the senses, or the deductions of the mere understanding from that evidence? Exactly the reverse: he disdained to argue even against Transubstantiation on such a ground, well knowing and loudly proclaiming its utter weakness and instability. But it was a leading principle in all his moral and intellectual views to assert the existence in all men equally of a power or faculty superior to, and independent of, the external senses: in this power or faculty he recognized that image of God in which ...

— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... buildings, grotesques, and landscapes, all so beautiful, that since his day whosoever has aimed at catholicity has imitated him. It is a marvellous thing and a fearsome to see from the example of this master the instability of Fortune and what she can bring to pass, causing men to become excellent in some profession from whom something quite different might have been expected, to the no small vexation of those who have laboured in vain for many years at the same art. It is a marvellous thing, ...

— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... side of the paper, is nearly filled with advertisements of sales by auction, a single glance at which would convince us of the instability of human affairs, even if we did not read in one corner, of a theatrical wardrobe, containing five splendid new court dresses, trimmed with gold and silver (except the pockets,) ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various

... true God, the honest Atheist, with his passionate impulse to strip the truth bare, is constantly and unwittingly reproducing the divine likeness. It will be interesting here to call a witness or so to the extreme instability of absolute negation. ...

— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... As regards the self, Bergson recognizes that we have much to gain by keeping up the illusion through which we make our conscious states share in the reciprocal externality of outer things, because this distinctness and solidification enables us to give them fixed names in spite of their instability, and distinct names in spite of their interpenetration. Above all it enables us to objectify them, to throw them out into the current of social life. But just for this very reason we are in danger of living our lives superficially and of covering up our ...

— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

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