movable

movable, mobile, motive mean capable of moving or of being moved.

Movable applies not to what has independent power of motion but to what can be moved by men or machines (as by lifting, drawing, pushing, or driving)

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a movable steam engine

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one's movable possessions

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some of these cabins were movable, and were carried on sledges from one part of the common to another— Macaulay

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or to what is not fixed in position or date

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printing from movable type

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a movable attachment for a machine

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movable feasts such as Easter and Whitsunday

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Mobile stresses facility or ease in moving or, less often, in being moved. It often describes the quality of flowing which distinguishes a fluid from a solid

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the mobile liquid passes into a compact rigid solid— T. H. Huxley

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or which characterizes an electric current or charge

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long-lasting circulation of the mobile charge, around and around the circuit— Darrow

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or the character which distinguishes something or someone that moves or is equipped or able to move quickly and readily, or to go (as from place to place or from one condition to another), from what is slow-moving or unlikely to engage in major moves

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a mobile army

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a mobile radio unit

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they attract the more ambitious, the more mobile young people— Amer. Jour, of Sociology

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American society, though highly mobile by European standards, is not classless— Times Lit. Sup.

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But equally often mobile describes features, faces, expressions of face, or thoughts which respond quickly and obviously to changing emotions, mental states, or external stimuli, often at the same time connoting either fickleness or instability or flexibility and versatility

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the gray restless eye, the thin mobile lips— J. R. Green

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you are as mobile as the veering air, and all your charms more changeful than the tide— Millay

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delicately sniffing the air to the left of him with his mobile nose end— Dahl

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Motive implies a moving only in the transitive sense of driving, or causing movement, or impelling to action; the term is used chiefly with reference to power or energy or their sources (as fuel, steam, or electricity) viewed as agent in a process of moving

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diesel engines supply the motive power for the new ship

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when horsepower and man power were alone employed, the motive agent was not bound up with the tool moved— Spencer

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Even when the reference is to something which constitutes a motive for action, "motive power," "motive force," or "motive energy" is likely to be used

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there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself— Wilde

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this new wave of motive energy began to penetrate the deep absorption in their own affairs of her husband and children— Dorothy Canfield

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his motive force is a blissful and naive faith— Rosten

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Analogous words: *changeable, changeful, variable, mutable

Antonyms: immovable: stationary

Contrasted words: fixed, set, settled, established (see SET vb)