Word.ws English Dictionary

metastability

metastability noun: an unstable but potentially long-lived state of a system; for example, a supersaturated solution or an excited atom.

Noun

metastability (countable and uncountable, plural metastabilities)

  1. An 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

Forms of metastability

pluralmetastabilities

Origin of metastability

From meta- + stability.

Words formed from metastability

Questions about metastability

What does metastability mean?
Metastability means an unstable but potentially long-lived state of a system; for example, a supersaturated solution or an excited atom.
What part of speech is metastability?
Metastability is a noun.
What is the plural of metastability?
The plural of metastability is metastabilities.

Words near metastability in the dictionary

  1. metasperm
  2. metasperms
  3. metasprite
  4. metasprites
  5. metastabilities
  6. metastability
  7. metastable
  8. metastable isomer
  9. metastable isomers
  10. metastables
  11. metastably

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: metastability (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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