static

Pluralstatics (some meanings)

1. 1
   radio noisenoununcountable

   Crackling on a radio or random speckling on a television picture, caused when atmospheric disturbances interfere with the broadcast signal.

   Lightning miles away filled the car radio with bursts of static.

   As the storm moved in, static broke up the announcer's voice.

   Similarinterference, crackle, noise

   Note

   Snow and shash are near-synonyms for the speckled picture, but static covers the crackle on the radio too. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen made a refrain of its absence in their 1978 song FM: no static at all. As a mass noun it comes in amounts, so a set picks up static, a lot of static, or garble and static.

2. 2
   electric chargenoununcountable

   Electric charge that builds up and stays on the surface of objects.

   Dryer sheets help reduce static in clothes.

   A spark of static jumped from her finger to the doorknob.

3. 3
   not changingadjective

   Not changing, or unable to change.

   Language is never static; new words appear every year.

   The company's static pay scale left workers without a raise for a decade.

   Similarunchanging, constant, stable, unvarying, changeless

   Oppositedynamic

   Note

   Greek statikós, from a verb meaning "to make stand", lies behind every sense of the word: what is static stands still. Its natural opposite is dynamic. Stable is close but not the same: a stable thing resists being changed, while a static one simply shows no change.

4. 4
   standing stilladjective

   Not moving; fixed in one place.

   The midfielders were too static, waiting for the ball instead of running into space.

   A static display of old aircraft stood beside the runway.

   Similarstationary, fixed, immobile, immovable, stuck

   Oppositemoving, mobile, dynamic, kinetic

   Note

   In sport the word is a criticism: a static player stands and waits instead of moving, like England's runners, static when taking the ball, in Tom Fordyce's BBC report on England 16-12 Scotland at the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Too static is the usual complaint, and mobile is the quality it denies.

5. 5
   adjective

   Stuck at a standstill and making no headway or progress.

   Peace negotiations remained static through the winter.

   The front line stayed static for months as neither army could advance.

   Similarstuck

   Oppositefluid, dynamic

6. 6
   oppositionnounfigurativelyuncountable

   Interference or obstruction coming from other people.

   The proposal met static from every department that stood to lose funding.

   She expected some static from the board, but the budget passed easily.

   Similarresistance, opposition, flak, pushback

   Oppositesupport

   Note

   The radio's interference turned into people's: you get static from whoever stands in the way of a plan, often a lot of static, as from the bean counters. It names friction and objection rather than insults, which belong to the slang of verbal abuse.

7. 7
   set in advanceadjective

   Computed, created, or allocated before a program starts running, rather than while it runs.

   Static type checking catches many errors at compile time, before any code runs.

   Memory for static data is reserved when the program is loaded, not requested at runtime.

   Oppositedynamic

   Note

   The word draws the programmer's line between what is settled before a program runs and what happens while it runs, with dynamic on the other side; static type checking, for instance, makes run-time checks unnecessary. It does not mean unchanging: a static website can be updated often, and the word only says its files sit ready to be served as they are.

8. 8
   shared (class)adjective

   Belonging to a class itself rather than to its instances, and so shared by all of them and usable even when no instance exists.

   Because the field is static, changing it in one object changes it for every instance of the class.

   Java programs start from a static main method, which can run before any object of the class has been created.

   Note

   Here the word is usually a keyword written into the code: static marks a member that belongs to the class, reached through the class name rather than through an object. One copy serves every instance, so a static field acts much like a global variable, with the same risks of shared state.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   In programming, a variable whose storage stays allocated for the whole time a program runs.

   Some compilers handle statics badly when the same header is included in many files.

   The code review flagged a static that was never reset between tests.

   Note

   Programmers clip static variable to static, and the noun is most at home in the plural: Dov Bulka and David Mayhew's Efficient C++ (2000) warns that some compilers let statics be inlined and then wrongly create several copies of each at run time. In writing for a wider audience, static variable is the clearer phrase.

10. 10
    insultsnounslangUSuncountable

    Abusive or hostile talk aimed at someone.

    The umpire took a lot of static from the home crowd after the call.

    Kids at his new school gave him static about his accent.

    Similarflak, abuse, grief, stick

    Note

    American slang with a combative edge, close to flak: you give someone static, get some static, or, like Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop (1984), ask whether someone wants to start some static. Everlast's What It's Like (1998) shows how harsh it can be: the static a woman gets walking into a clinic is being called a killer and a sinner.

11. 11
    fixed caravannouncountable

    A caravan that stays fixed on one site rather than being towed from place to place.

    The site has two hundred statics, a pool and a small shop.

    They sold the house and now live year-round in a static on a site near the beach.

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