Word of the Day

: January 9, 2017

immutable

adjective ih-MYOO-tuh-bul

What It Means

: not capable of or susceptible to change

immutable in Context

"There's an immutable attraction between fingers and potato chips, making resistance, as the saying goes, futile." — Michele Henry, The Toronto Star, 30 Nov. 2016

"Like much of the American heartland, the summertime landscape in Iowa's Webster County is dominated by several immutable features: hot sun and lots of it; a ruler-straight grid of byways …; shining grain silos towering above the plains; and farmhouses…." — Michelle Donahue, PCMag.com, 8 Nov. 2016

Did You Know?

Immutable comes to us through Middle English from Latin immutabilis, meaning "unable to change." Immutabilis was formed by combining the negative prefix in- with mutabilis, which comes from the Latin verb mutare and means "to change." Some other English words that can 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."