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say it: VAH-luh-tuhl
volatile is an adjective and noun meaning "evaporating readily at normal temperatures and pressures". It carries 5 recorded senses.
evaporating readily at normal temperatures and pressures
“volatile oils”
“volatile solvents”
chemistry
liable to lead to sudden change or violence
“an explosive issue”
“a volatile situation with troops and rioters eager for a confrontation”
marked by erratic changeableness in affections or attachments
“fickle friends”
“a flirt's volatile affections”
a volatile substance; a substance that changes readily from solid or liquid to a vapor
“it was heated to evaporate the volatiles”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for volatile come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.