CHANGEABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does changeable mean? 

• CHANGEABLE (adjective)
  The adjective CHANGEABLE has 4 senses:

1. capable of or tending to change in form or quality or nature

2. such that alteration is possible; having a marked tendency to change

3. subject to change

4. varying in color when seen in different lights or from different angles

  Familiarity information: CHANGEABLE used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CHANGEABLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Capable of or tending to change in form or quality or nature

Synonyms:

changeable; mutable

Context example:

a mutable foreign policy

Derivation:

changeability; changeableness (the quality of being changeable; having a marked tendency to change)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Such that alteration is possible; having a marked tendency to change

Synonyms:

changeable; changeful

Context example:

changeable prices

Similar:

adjustable (capable of being regulated)

volatile (tending to vary often or widely)

reversible (capable of assuming or producing either of two states)

quick-drying (of a liquid substance that dries quickly)

quick-change (adept at changing from one thing to another especially changing costumes)

open-ended (allowing for future changes or revisions)

mutable (tending to undergo genetic mutuation)

mobile (capable of changing quickly from one state or condition to another)

kaleidoscopic; kaleidoscopical (continually shifting or rapidly changing)

jittering (undergoing small rapid variations)

fluid; mobile (affording change (especially in social status))

fluid; unstable (subject to change; variable)

erratic; fickle; mercurial; quicksilver (liable to sudden unpredictable change)

distortable (capable of having the meaning altered or twisted)

checkered (marked by changeable fortune)

astatic (not static or stable)

Also:

inconstant (likely to change frequently often without apparent or cogent reason; variable)

exchangeable (suitable to be exchanged)

Attribute:

changeability; changeableness (the quality of being changeable; having a marked tendency to change)

Antonym:

unchangeable (not changeable or subject to change)

Derivation:

changeableness (the quality of being changeable; having a marked tendency to change)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Subject to change

Synonyms:

changeable; uncertain; unsettled

Context example:

unsettled weather with rain and hail and sunshine coming one right after the other

Similar:

variable (liable to or capable of change)

Derivation:

changeability; changeableness (the quality of being changeable; having a marked tendency to change)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Varying in color when seen in different lights or from different angles

Synonyms:

changeable; chatoyant; iridescent; shot

Context example:

a dragonfly hovered, vibrating and iridescent

Similar:

colorful; colourful (having much or varied color)

Derivation:

changeableness (the quality of being changeable; having a marked tendency to change)

 Context examples 

When long-term memories are recalled, they become fragile and changeable.

(How Our Memory Works, NIH, US)

Understanding how plants make decisions isn’t just interesting, it will help scientists breed new plant varieties that can respond to their increasingly changeable environment with climate change.

(Plants can tell time even without a brain, University of Cambridge)

His feelings are warm, but I can imagine them rather changeable.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

I'm often cross to you, and changeable with you, when I ought to be far different.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The thing was as impossible as to mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his own.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Are his/her moods very changeable?

(NPI - Get Irritated and Easily Disturbed, NCI Thesaurus)

I do not think anything would justify me in wishing you to sacrifice all your happiness merely to oblige my brother, because he is my brother, and who perhaps after all, you know, might be just as happy without you, for people seldom know what they would be at, young men especially, they are so amazingly changeable and inconstant.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Oh, my dear, it might have been a better fortune for you, if you had been fond of someone else—of someone steadier and much worthier than me, who was all bound up in you, and never vain and changeable like me!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)