stable vs variable

stable

adj
  • Relatively unchanging, steady, permanent; firmly fixed or established; consistent; not easily moved, altered, or destroyed. 

  • Of software: established to be relatively free of bugs, as opposed to a beta version. 

  • That maintains the relative order of items that compare as equal. 

verb
  • to put or keep (an animal) in a stable. 

  • to dwell in a stable. 

  • to park (a rail vehicle). 

noun
  • A group of people who are looked after, mentored, or trained in one place or for a particular purpose or profession. 

  • A set of advocates; a barristers' chambers. 

  • A building, wing or dependency set apart and adapted for lodging and feeding (and training) ungulates, especially horses. 

  • All the racehorses of a particular stable, i.e. belonging to a given owner. 

  • An organization of sumo wrestlers who live and train together. 

  • A group of wrestlers who support each other within a wrestling storyline. 

  • A group of prostitutes managed by one pimp. 

variable

adj
  • Tending to deviate from a normal or recognized type. 

  • Able to vary or be varied. 

  • Having no fixed quantitative value. 

  • Likely to vary. 

  • Marked by diversity or difference. 

noun
  • A quantity that may assume any one of a set of values. 

  • A shifting wind, or one that varies in force. 

  • A variable star. 

  • A symbol representing a variable. 

  • Something that is variable. 

  • Those parts of the sea where a steady wind is not expected, especially the parts between the trade-wind belts. 

  • Something whose value may be dictated or discovered. 

  • A named memory location in which a program can store intermediate results and from which it can read them. 

How often have the words stable and variable occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )