- Today's Word
Labile
LAY-byle
Definition
(adjective) Likely to change rapidly, especially emotionally or chemically.
Example
The labile patient’s mood shifted from joy to tears within minutes.
Fun Fact
Labile comes from the Latin labilis, meaning “slippery”—fitting for a word used to describe volatility. In neuroscience, labile emotions refer to intense mood swings, such as in bipolar disorder. In chemistry, it applies to bonds or compounds that shift states easily. The word is also increasingly used in pop psychology to describe people whose reactions change without warning.
(noun/verb) A large, disordered mass or quantity of something; a confused, turbulent state of affairs.
She returned from the conference with a welter of contradictory advice, conflicting data, and competing priorities that somehow all needed to be acted on simultaneously.