mutable

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English mutable,^[2] borrowed from Latin mūtābilis (“liable to change, changeable, fickle”),^[3][4][5][6] from mūtō (“to change”) and the suffix -bilis.^[3][7] Barnhart thinks the borrowing was possibly influenced by Old Occitan mutable;^[8] the OED compares Middle French mutable, in an isolated record of 1576, and the slightly earlier English muable.^[3] Etymonline traces the Latin verb to Proto-Indo-European *mei- (“to change, go, move”),^[5] Hoad to an extended form *moit- of that base,^[9] and Klein relates it to mūtuus (“borrowed, lent, reciprocal”).^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Liable to change: about 1380, in Chaucer's translation of Boethius, where the OED dates the manuscript to before about 1425.^[3][8] Etymonline says the late 14th century,^[5] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged the 14th century.^[11] Benson's concordance finds it only once in Chaucer.^[12]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the word was used of Fortune and of the world, which were unstable, and of people, who were inconstant.^[2] The sense "fickle" is recorded in about 1425, in Lydgate's Troyyes Book, and is now chiefly literary.^[3] Johnson (1755) gives the same two senses, "subject to change" and "inconstant".^[13] Grammarians applied the word to consonants subject to mutation from 1707, in E. Lhuyd, a use now rare.^[3] Later fields added their own senses: biology, of what can undergo genetic mutation, from 1905, and astrology, of four signs of the zodiac, from 1928.^[3] The noun had a short life for things capable of change (1652) and for a mutable consonant (1767–1821), and the mutable, for what is liable to change, appears in Emerson in 1850.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1380 – liable to change.^[3][8]
• c. 1425 – fickle, inconstant.^[3]
• 1652 – noun, in the plural, things capable of change.^[3]
• 1707 – of a consonant, subject to mutation.^[3]
• 1850 – noun, the mutable, that which changes.^[3]
• 1905 – capable of genetic mutation.^[3]
• 1928 – of four signs of the zodiac.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Able or likely to change: The rules of the club proved quite mutable.^[14][11][3]
2. Fickle, inconstant: a mutable temper.^[11][3]
3. (biology) Capable of mutation; liable to mutate.^[11][3]
4. (astrology) Of Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces, the signs associated with adaptability.^[14][3]
5. (rare) Of a consonant, subject to mutation.^[11][3]

Noun

1. With the: that which is liable to change.^[3]
2. (obsolete, 1767–1821) A mutable sound or consonant.^[3][11]

Word family

• mutability
• mutably
• hypermutable
• nonmutable
• unmutable

Related words

• mutate
• mutation
• mutual
• immutable

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins