Crossword clues for mutability
mutability
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Mutability \Mu`ta*bil"i*ty\, n. [L. mutabilitas: cf. F. mutabilit['e].] The quality of being mutable, or subject to change or alteration, either in form, state, or essential character; susceptibility of change; changeableness; inconstancy; variation.
Plato confessed that the heavens and the frame of the
world are corporeal, and therefore subject to
mutability.
--Stillingfleet.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., "tendency to change, inconstancy," from Middle French mutabilité, from Latin mutabilitas, from mutabilis (see mutable).
Wiktionary
n. The quality or state of being mutable.
WordNet
n. the quality of being capable of mutation [syn: mutableness] [ant: immutability, immutability]
Wikipedia
"Mutability" is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley which appeared in the 1816 collection Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude: And Other Poems. Half of the poem is quoted in his wife Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein although his authorship is not acknowledged. She is credited as the author of the lines. There is also a prose version of the same themes of the poem in Frankenstein.
The eight lines from the poem "Mutability" which are quoted in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) occur in the scene in Chapter 10 when Victor Frankenstein climbs Glacier Montanvert in the Swiss Alps and encounters the Being:
"We rest. -- A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. -- One wandering thought pollutes the day;We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:It is the same! For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability."The monster also quotes a line from the poem in Chapter 15 of Frankenstein. The monster says: "'The path of my departure was free;' and there was none to lament my annihilation."
Usage examples of "mutability".
From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might oversoar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
It is not here expressly stated that the theory of the mutability of species is Mr.
I would have no terror of mutability because I would know all, and the pygmies who now surround me would be spiteblasted away.
Andries Rhoodie set forth those origins to him, had frequently dwelt on the mutability of history.
Quirk added mutability of desires to the strange humors that had taken possession of him.
And in his stable at Ascot the son of Sleeping Dove, from home for the first time, pondered on the mutability of equine affairs, closing and opening his eyes, and breathing without sound in the strawy dark, above the black cat he had brought to bear him company.
And why should moralists mourn over the mutability that gives the chief charm to all that passes so transitorily before our eyes!
Why, it may be asked, have all the most eminent living naturalists and geologists rejected this view of the mutability of species?
Although naturalists very properly demand a full explanation of every difficulty from those who believe in the mutability of species, on their own side they ignore the whole subject of the first appearance of species in what they consider reverent silence.
He saw a lemon-colored flower which, as the days passed, would reveal to him its mutability, for it would turn apricot in the afternoon and a deep red at sunset, as others, saffron in the center, faded then to lilial white.