adiabatic
adjective
adi·a·bat·ic
ˌa-dē-ə-ˈba-tik 
ˌā-ˌdī-ə-
: occurring without loss or gain of heat
adiabatic expansion of a gas
Examples of adiabatic in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The sinking air warms through something called adiabatic compression.
—
Marshall Shepherd, Forbes.com, 27 July 2025
That process causes something called adiabatic warming, so the winds feel warm or hot.
—Marshall Shepherd, Forbes, 8 Jan. 2025
The catch is that, to avoid transferring any heat—to be what physicists call an adiabatic process—the series of logical operations in the computation must usually be carried out infinitely slowly.
—Philip Ball, Scientific American, 29 Mar. 2022
Race to the Bottom 1926: Chemists first describe a method, called adiabatic demagnetization, that uses magnetic fields to cool materials below 1 kelvin.
—Stephen Ornes, Discover Magazine, 25 June 2019
Another based on adiabatic quantum computing involves the D-Wave quantum annealing machines being tested by Google, NASA and Lockheed Martin.
—Jeremy Hsu, IEEE Spectrum, 20 Oct. 2016
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Marshall Shepherd, Forbes.com, 27 July 2025
That process causes something called adiabatic warming, so the winds feel warm or hot.
—Marshall Shepherd, Forbes, 8 Jan. 2025
The catch is that, to avoid transferring any heat—to be what physicists call an adiabatic process—the series of logical operations in the computation must usually be carried out infinitely slowly.
—Philip Ball, Scientific American, 29 Mar. 2022
Race to the Bottom 1926: Chemists first describe a method, called adiabatic demagnetization, that uses magnetic fields to cool materials below 1 kelvin.
—Stephen Ornes, Discover Magazine, 25 June 2019
Another based on adiabatic quantum computing involves the D-Wave quantum annealing machines being tested by Google, NASA and Lockheed Martin.
—Jeremy Hsu, IEEE Spectrum, 20 Oct. 2016
Cite this Entry
“Adiabatic.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adiabatic. Accessed 9 Sep. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
adiabatic
adjective
adi·a·bat·ic
ˌad-ē-ə-ˈbat-ik
ˌā-ˌdī-ə-
: occurring without loss or gain of heat
adiabatic expansion of a gas
adiabatically
adverb
-ˈbat-i-k(ə-)lē
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