mobile
Noun pluralmobiles
Pluralmobiles
- 1Belonging to, made for, or done on a cell phone, as a mobile number, a mobile app, or mobile banking.
Mobile banking lets users transfer money straight from their phones.
The company launched a mobile app for ordering food on the go.
UsageUsually before a noun: a mobile number, mobile banking, a mobile app.
Note
Here the word works before a noun: a mobile number, mobile internet, and, in The Economist of December 2012, paying "by mobile money-transfer." The phrase behind it is mobile phone, whose clipped form gives the noun for the handset.
- 2Able to move or be moved freely and easily, especially from place to place.
The mobile command center can be deployed to disaster zones within hours.
Engineers designed a mobile crane capable of relocating across the site.
Note
Its opposites split by cause. Immovable says a thing cannot be moved, immobile that it cannot move or simply is not moving, fixed that it has been secured, and stationary that it is not moving or is not meant to move. A mobile home is built to be moved, even if it then stays in one place for years.
- 3Ellipsis of mobile phone, meaning the phone itself rather than anything done with it.
She charged her mobile overnight so it would last the trip.
He silenced his mobile before the meeting began.
UsageUse on for calls and messages: call me on my mobile, I saw it on my mobile.
Note
The everyday British and Irish word for the handset. It is clipped from mobile phone, so the adjective now carries the whole noun's job. It also sits easily in lists, as in Michela Wrong's "money, mobile, wallet" (2009). Cell phone names the same object.
- 4Internet access obtained through phones, tablets, and other handheld devices.
Retailers report that most of their traffic now comes from mobile.
The team optimized the checkout page for mobile.
UsageUsed with no a or the: traffic from mobile, designed for mobile, shop on mobile.
Oppositedesktop
Less common meanings
- 5USMOH-beel/ˈmoʊbil/UKMOH-byl/ˈməʊbaɪl/A hanging sculpture or decoration made of pieces arranged so that each can move independently in moving air.
Like a wind chime built to be watched rather than heard.
The gallery's central mobile turned slowly as visitors walked past.
He balanced each arm of the mobile until the whole piece hung level.
Oppositestabile
Note
Sculpture defines it against a matched opposite, the stabile, a piece that stands still instead of hanging free. The noun keeps the Latin sense of "easy to be moved" behind the root adjective. What makes a mobile is not its material but the fact that its balanced parts turn on their own. Over a crib or in a gallery, the construction is the same.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- A stabile is the stationary counterpart of a mobile. en.wiktionary.org
- Mobile ultimately derives from Latin mōbilis, meaning “easy to be moved”. en.wiktionary.org
- The hanging mobile is characterized by balanced, independently movable parts rather than a particular material. en.wikipedia.org
- The hanging mobile construction is also used for decorations over cribs. en.wikipedia.org
- 6Free or ready to change jobs, move to a new home, or rise or fall between social classes.
The firm wants a mobile workforce that will relocate wherever new projects open up.
Free public colleges made the postwar generation far more socially mobile than their parents.
UsageOften after an adverb: socially mobile, upwardly mobile (rising in class or income), as in upwardly mobile couples.
Note
Here what moves is a person's life rather than an object: a mobile workforce follows the work, and a socially mobile generation ends up in a different class from its parents.
- 7Easily changed in feeling, purpose, or direction; excitable and inclined to shift.
Like quicksilver, shifting the instant anything touches it.
Her mobile temperament made her thrilling company but an unreliable ally.
The crowd's mobile sympathies swung from the prisoner to his accusers within a single afternoon.
UsageMostly with words for a person's nature: a mobile mind, temper or curiosity.
Similarchangeable, fickle, unstable, excitable, variable
Oppositestable, steady, constant, steadfast
Note
Applied to temperament, the word can praise as easily as blame. Fickle sits at its harsh end and excitable in the middle. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), Pearl falls silent because "the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition" is caught by newcomers: a mind that darts rather than wavers. The face has its own expressive meaning.
- 8
- 9Readily changing in appearance and expression as thoughts and feelings shift.
Her mobile features registered surprise, doubt, and delight in quick succession.
The comedian's mobile face did half the work of the joke.
Similarexpressive, animated
Oppositeimpassive, expressionless, deadpan, wooden
Note
A word for faces, and once felt as borrowed. In Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Ethel Churchill (1837), features "capable of every variety of expression" are called, "to use a French epithet," "mobile in the extreme." It still keeps company with features and face, and it describes more often than it blames: a mobile face shows thought as it happens, unlike the restless disposition of the "changeable" meaning.
- 10A person who moves or is able to move, such as someone who travels.
- 11A computer-controlled character or creature in a video game, especially an enemy that players fight.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Latin mōbilis ("easy to be moved, moveable"), from moveō ("move"), passed through Old French into Middle English.