volatile

From Middle French volatile, from Latin volātilis (“flying; swift; temporary; volatile”), from volō (“to fly”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈvɒl.əˌtaɪl/, [ˈvɒl.əˌtʰaɪ̯l]

  • Audio (UK):

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈvɑ.lə.təl/, [ˈvɑl.ə.tʰl̩]
• Rhymes: -aɪl, -əl
• Hyphenation: vol‧a‧tile

volatile (comparative more volatile, superlative most volatile)

2. (physics) Evaporating or vaporizing readily under normal conditions.
3. (informal) Of a substance, explosive.
4. (economics, finance) Of a price, variable or erratic.
   • 2024 November 19, Jeanne Sahadi, “Bitcoin has smashed records. Should you invest?”, in CNN Business‎^[1], archived from the original on 4 June 2025:

     Its pricing is highly volatile — and therefore highly risky. For all its nosebleed ascents, bitcoin also has had some gut-punching plunges. Between November 2021 and November 2022, for example, the price of bitcoin dropped 75%, from $64,455 to $16,196, according to data on coinmarketcap.com.

5. Of a person, quick to become angry or violent.

   Synonyms: furious, rabid, raging; see also Thesaurus:ferocious

   a volatile man

6. Fickle.

   Synonyms: changeable, erratic, unpredictable

   • 2007 August 1, “Unwise Arms Deal With Saudi Arabia (2 Letters)”, in The New York Times‎^[2], archived from the original on 26 November 2022:

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

7. Temporary or ephemeral.

   Synonyms: fleeting, passing, transitory; see also Thesaurus:ephemeral

8. Of a situation potentially violent.
9. (programming) Of a variable etc., having its associated memory immediately updated with any changes in value.
   • 2010, Jon Jagger, Nigel Perry, Peter Sestoft, Annotated C# Standard, page 467:

     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.

10. (computing) Of memory, whose content is lost when the computer is powered down.
11. (obsolete) Passing through the air on wings, or by the buoyant force of the atmosphere; flying; having the power to fly.

    (Can we add an example for this sense?)

volatile (plural volatiles)

1. A chemical or compound that changes into a gas easily.
2. (programming) A variable that is volatile, i.e. has its associated memory immediately updated with any change in value.
   • 2011, Victor Pankratius, Ali-Reza Adl-Tabatabai, Walter Tichy, Fundamentals of Multicore Software Development, page 74:

     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.

Compare volaille.

• IPA^(key): /vɔ.la.til/

• Audio (Switzerland (Valais)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Vosges)):

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volatile

1. feminine singular of volatil

volatile m (plural volatiles)

1. fowl, bird

• “volatile”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

• Audio (Germany (Berlin)):

  (file)

volatile

1. inflection of volatil:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

From Latin volātilis.

• IPA^(key): /voˈla.ti.le/
• Rhymes: -atile
• Hyphenation: vo‧là‧ti‧le

volatile m or f by sense (plural volatili)

1. (chemistry, physics) volatile
2. flying

   Synonym: volante

volatile m (plural volatili)

1. bird, fowl

   Synonym: uccello

2. (vulgar) penis

• volatile in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [wɔˈɫaː.tɪ.ɫɛ]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [voˈlaː.ti.le]

volātile

1. nominative/accusative/vocative neuter singular of volātilis

• "volatile", in Charles du Fresne du Cange, Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)