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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Adiabatic

Adiabatic \Ad`i*a*bat"ic\, a. [Gr. ? not passable; 'a priv. + ? through + ? to go.] (Physics) Not giving out or receiving heat. -- Ad`i*a*bat`ic*al*ly, adv.

Note: The adiabatic expansion of carbon dioxide from a compressed container causes the temperature of the gas to decrease rapidly below its freezing point, resulting in the familiar carbon dioxide ``snow'' emitted by carbon dioxide fire extinguishers.

Adiabatic line or curve, a curve exhibiting the variations of pressure and volume of a fluid when it expands without either receiving or giving out heat.
--Rankine.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
adiabatic

1838, from Greek adiabatos "not to be passed through," from a- "not" + dia "through" (see dia-) + batos "passable," from bainein "to go" (see come).

Wiktionary
adiabatic

a. 1 (context physics thermodynamics of a process English) That occurs without gain or loss of heat (and thus with no change in entropy, in the quasistatic approximation). 2 (context physics quantum mechanics of a process English) That involves the slow change of the Hamiltonian of a system from its initial value to a final value.

WordNet
adiabatic

adj. occurring without loss or gain of heat; "adiabatic expansion" [ant: diabatic]

Wikipedia

Usage examples of "adiabatic".

They feed all these numbers into a Cray, and the animal pounds away, megaflops, on a simulation that knows everything about adiabatic cooling, turbulence, vapor pressures, topography, solar radiation.

That stretching and flexing would appear as adiabatic heating and cooling, driving the local temperature up and down differentially along the length.