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stationary

UK/ˈsteɪʃ(ə)n(ə)ɹi/US/ˈsteɪʃəˌnɛɹi/
adjectiveB1+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,465 of 15,258leans written

Stationary means not moving. A stationary vehicle, stationary traffic, remain stationary.

It ends in -ary and is not the same word as stationery with an -ery, which is paper and pens. The trick for remembering is that stationery has an e, as in envelope. A stationary front in weather is one that has stopped advancing.

Definitions of stationary

  1. 1adjectivestationaryNot moving.B1+

    “The car was stationary at the traffic lights when the lorry hit it.”

stationary is a state.

Where it comes from

Latin stationarius comes from statio, a standing, from stare, to stand.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *steh₂-

  2. Latin

    stationarius

  3. English, today

    stationary

Built from

  • stō · Latin — to stand

From Latin stationarius, from statio, ultimately from stō (“to stand”). a doublet of stationer.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

stationary in the wild

  • The rotor coil is externally excited by a small direct current (DC), while the AC is generated in the stationary coils.

    Alternator

  • A trend-stationary process is not strictly stationary but can be made stationary by removing the trend.

    Stationary process

  • Similarly, processes with unit roots can be made stationary through differencing.

    Stationary process

  • A stationary engine is an engine whose framework does not move.

    Stationary engine

  • The term usually refers to large immobile reciprocating engines, principally stationary steam engines and, to some extent, stationary internal combustion engines.

    Stationary engine

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.