mobile

Capable of being moved, especially on wheels.

Adjective

  1. Capable of being moved, especially on wheels.
    • a mobile home

    Synonyms: movable afoot animate astir cursory dynamic in motion mobile moving on the move on the wing under sail unstill ambulatory kinetic motile motive vagile

    Antonyms: fixed immobile immovable sessile stationary

  2. Pertaining to or by agency of mobile phones.
    • mobile number
    • mobile internet
    • A farmer could place an order for a new tractor part by text message and pay for it by mobile money-transfer. A supplier many miles away would then take the part to the local matternet station for airborne dispatch via...
  3. Characterized by an extreme degree of fluidity; moving or flowing with great freedom.
    • Mercury is a mobile liquid.

    Synonyms: fluxive flowy fluent fluid free-flowing liquid mobile runny thin watery

  4. Easily moved in feeling, purpose, or direction; excitable; changeable; fickle.
    • the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition - 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 7, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:

    Synonyms: excitable fickle changeable changeful changeling dynamic everchanging fluid inconstant labile mobile moody shiftable up-and-down unstable variable volatile wavering

  5. Changing in appearance and expression under the influence of the mind.
    • mobile features
    • His finely cut features were capable of every variety of expression; they were, to use a French epithet, expressive as their epithets for all social qualities usually are, mobile in the extreme. - 1837, L[etitia]...
  6. Capable of being moved, aroused, or excited; capable of spontaneous movement.

    Synonyms: motile

    Antonyms: sessile

Origin

From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin mōbilis (“easy to be moved, moveable”), from moveō (“move”). The video-gaming sense was coined by Richard Bartle to describe NPCs or creatures capable of moving "under their own power" in the 1978 video game Multi-User Dungeon. Bartle retracted an earlier claim of his that it was from the kinetic sculpture sense of mobile (for the "unpredictable but limited" motion of the hanging ornaments).

Forms

more mobile most mobile

Derived

airmobile cellular mobile dorsomobile ground mobile force hypermobile hypomobile madware MASH mob mobile billboard mobilecasting mobile chicane mobile crane mobile data mobile elevated work platform mobile elevating work platform mobile entity mobile game Mobilegeddon mobile genetic element mobile home mobile home park mobile library mobilelike

Noun

  1. A kinetic sculpture or decorative arrangement made of items hanging so that they can move independently from each other.

    Antonyms: stabile

  2. Ellipsis of mobile phone.
    • Mobiles squerking, mobiles chirping / Take the money and run - 2000, “Idioteque”, in Kid A, performed by Radiohead:
    • Pinned against my neighbours, I could feel small hands, fleeting as lizards, fluttering lightly through my pockets in search of money, mobile, wallet. - 2009, Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan...

    Synonyms: cell phone

  3. The internet accessed via mobile devices; the version of a product seen on mobile devices.
    • There are many business opportunities in mobile.
    • The bug affects mobile, but not desktop.
  4. One who moves or can move (e.g. to travel).
    • […] if the constrained "immobiles" are given the same transportation access as the unconstrained "mobiles". […] We concentrated on a mobile teenager population that had good public transportation or automobile access...
    • Table 6.5 does indeed show that non-changers were more contented […] For Table 6.7 shows that even when we take account of the initial differences between the mobiles and immobiles, the mobiles' ratings of job...
    • One ex-airwoman recalls meal times for both 'mobiles' and 'immobiles', when they sat on backless benches at long bare tables. The 'immobiles' brought in their own food, crockery and cutlery. A free-standing iron range...

    Antonyms: immobile

  5. An object capable of moving under its own power.

    Antonyms: inanimate

  6. A creature or NPC that can navigate and interact with the game world (now often shortened to mob).
    • MUD has a type of character called a mobile. These are monsters controlled by the program such as the Dragon and the Vampire. To kill these a band of adventurers need to hunt down the creature hurling a combined...
    • Even mundane mobiles are very advanced. They incorporate other expert systems that enable them to fight (often better than the players); […] - 1991, “Modems and Mazes: Life and Death Over the Phone”, in The Gamesman,...

    Synonyms: mob mobile object agent non-player character

Forms

mobiles

Related

mobility mobilization mobilize move

Derived

blingmobile mobile entity mobile-first mobileless mobile object moby