adjective
volatile
Likely to change suddenly or violently; in chemistry, readily becoming vapour.
Where it comes from
Volatile ordinarily means likely to change suddenly or violently; in chemistry, readily becoming vapour. Volatile came through French from Latin volatilis, flying or winged, based on volare, to fly. The English word could once name a winged creature; Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary defined the noun as a winged animal. Chemists applied the flying image to substances that readily pass into vapor.
How the meaning developed
From physical readiness to fly away came figurative senses such as fleeting, fickle, rapidly changing, and dangerously liable to erupt; finance adopted the changeable sense for prices.
Sources
- Volatile Definition & Meaning
- ‘Volatile’: Stable Meanings for a Flighty Word
- American Heritage Dictionary Entry: volatile
Definitions adapted from Open English WordNet where applicable. License and attribution. Word-history text comes from Lexifour’s sourced social research; pages are assembled automatically, not individually fact-checked on every update.
Updated 2026-10-05. Report a correction.