Meanings
nounmetastability (countable and uncountable, plural metastabilities)
plural metastabilities
- countableuncountableAn unstable but potentially long-lived state of a system; for example, a supersaturated solution or an excited atom.
Soloman's belief that love is necessarily paradoxical issues from his attempt to define it as what Sartre would call a dialectical metastability. Love must therefore be not a "state of the union but a never ending conflict of pushing away and pulling together."
1989, Irving Singer, The Nature of Love
Origin
- Proto-Indo-European*me
- Proto-Indo-European*meth₂?
- Ancient Greekμετᾰ́ (metắ)
- Ancient Greekμετᾰ- (metă-)
- Englishmeta-
- Englishstability
- Englishmetastability
Translations
French métastabilité
- métastabilitéunstable but potentially long-lived state
German Metastabilität
- Metastabilitätunstable but potentially long-lived state
Italian metastabilità
- metastabilitàunstable but potentially long-lived state
Spanish metaestabilidad
- metaestabilidadunstable but potentially long-lived state
Turkish yarı kararlılık
- yarı kararlılıkunstable but potentially long-lived state
Cite this entry
APA
metastability. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/metastability
MLA
“metastability.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/metastability. Accessed November 3, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “metastability,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/metastability.
Source: metastability on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.