From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary EnglishRelated topics: Chemistryunstableun‧sta‧ble /ʌnˈsteɪbəl/ ●○○AWL adjective1CHANGE/BECOME DIFFERENTlikely to change suddenly and become worse → instability
The political situation is still very unstable.
an unstable relationship2BALANCE#something that is unstable is likely to move or fall3CHANGE/BECOME DIFFERENTsomeone who is unstable changes very suddenly so that you do not know how they will react or behave
a mentally unstable man4HCan unstable chemical is likely to separate into simplersubstancesExamples from the Corpusunstable• The situation here is precarious, quite unstable.• The situation there remains very unstable.• This moves their orbitalelectrons from the ground state to a higher energy level that is unstable.• Regimesgoverned by violence are always unstable.• Was it safe to trust someone who was so emotionally unstable?• Handyrejects a full-blownversion of this vision on the grounds that such a divergent society would be very unstable.• It was potentially extremely dangerous and although it had survived since the war it may have been very unstable.• He is emotionally unstable, and his aggressiveattitude often culminates in violence.• The isotope U-235 is unstable, decaying by a process called spontaneousfission.• an unstableeconomy• That scaffolding looks unstable - get all the building workers off the site immediately.• The woman, who was described as mentally unstable, refused to talk about her reasons for the shooting.• Working with Clare every day, I began to realize how unstable she was.
