immutable
[email protected] 26 Jan 2008 10:24:04 -0000
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The Word of the Day for January 26 is:=20
immutable \ih-MYOO-tuh-bul\ adjective
: not capable of or susceptible to change
Example sentence:
"Emboldened local farmers, whose diets had for the past 200 ye=
ars been nearly as immutable as those of their horses, began to drift ov=
er to the sushi bar to see what ...was going on." (William Hamilton, _Go=
urmet_, October 2003)
Did you know?
"Immutable" comes to us through Middle English from Latin "imm=
utabilis," meaning "unable to change." "Immutabilis" was formed by combi=
ning the negative prefix "in-" with "mutabilis," which comes from the La=
tin verb "mutare" and means "to change." Some other English words that c=
an be traced back to "mutare" are "commute" (the earliest sense of which=
is simply "to change or alter"), "mutate" ("to undergo significant and =
basic alteration"), "permute" ("to change the order or arrangement of"),=
and "transmute" ("to change or alter in form, appearance, or nature"). =
There's also the antonym of "immutable" -- "mutable" -- which of course =
can mean "prone to change" and "capable of change or of being changed."
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