Volatile

Quick meaning: Volatile is an adjective meaning (physics) Evaporating or vaporizing readily under normal conditions.

Meaning

(physics) Evaporating or vaporizing readily under normal conditions.

More Meanings

1. (informal) Of a substance, explosive.
2. (economics, finance) Of a price, variable or erratic.
3. Of a person, quick to become angry or violent.
4. Temporary or ephemeral.
5. Of a situation potentially violent.
6. (programming) Of a variable etc., having its associated memory immediately updated with any changes in value.

Example Sentences

a volatile man

Now Mr. Bush plans to pour more arms into this unstable region and add fuel to the volatile powderkeg he has foolishly created.

Operations on C++ volatiles do put the compiler on notice that the object may be modified asynchronously, and hence are generally safer to use than ordinary variable accesses.

This method stores a value into a non-volatile field called result, then stores true in the volatile field finished. The main thread waits for the field finished to be set to true, then reads the field result.

Word Forms

• volatiles

Synonyms for volatile

Depending on context, synonyms include furious, rabid, raging, ferocious, fierce, grim.

Antonyms for volatile

Common opposites include nonvolatile, nonvolatilizable.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include vaporific, volatilizable, evaporable, vaporizable, explosive, changeful.

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