adiabatic
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Occurring without loss or gain of heat.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ahdeeuhbatikSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɑdiəˈbætɪk
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
physicsthermodynamicsof a process
Occurring without loss or gain of heat
physicsquantum mechanicsof a process
Involving the slow change of the Hamiltonian of a system from its initial value to a final value.
noun
An adiabatic curve or graph
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Occurring without loss or gain of heat
Used this way, adiabatic is a specialist word with a mildly favourable edge. This is a scientific use: it names something precisely within a field of study, so it appears in research and teaching more than in conversation.
- Emotional tone
- Slightly positive
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Positive and appreciative
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Academic writing
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use adiabatic
- “Adiabatic expansion.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Any process that occurs without gain or loss of heat.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Antonyms
Sense: occurring without loss or gain of heat
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.