stationary

adjective

Simple meaning

Incapable of being moved.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

stayshuhnuhree

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IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈsteɪʃ(ə)n(ə)ɹi

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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

Not moving.
“The train remained stationary for a few moments, before lurching forward along the track.”
Incapable of being moved
Unchanging

Word Aura™

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

stationary phasestationary statestationary pointstationary processstationary distributionremained stationarystationary populationstationary source

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

stationary stochastic processnounCompound term
A stochastic process in which the distribution of the random variables is the same for any value of the variable parameter.
stationary wavenounCompound term
A wave (as a sound wave in a chamber or an electromagnetic wave in a transmission line) in which the ratio of its instantaneous amplitude at one point to that at any other point does not…

Commonly Confused With

stationeryStationary vs. StationeryKnow the difference

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What Does It Mean Here?

Words can change meaning depending on context.

Related Learning

Guides that use this word in context.

Word Differences
Stationary vs. Stationery: A vs. E
Stationary means not moving. Stationery means paper and pens. One letter decides which, and there’s a trick for remembering it.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API (CC BY-SA 3.0). Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.