It's the Word of the Day podcast for November 12.
Today's word is labial, spelled L-A-B-I-L-E.
Labile is an adjective.
Someone or something described as labile is readily open to change.
Labile can also be used as a synonym of the word unstable to describe things that are readily or continually undergoing chemical,
physical, or biological change or breakdown.
Here's the word used in a sentence from The Boston Globe by Jeremy Yudkin.
Amid this high level of acting skill,
musician Kate Lindsay stood out with her wonderfully convincing gestures and facial expressions,
filling out the character of the more labile younger sister with captivating verisimilitude.
We are confident that you won't slip up or err in learning today's word, despite its etymology.
Labial was borrowed into English from French and can be traced back by way of the middle French word labile,
meaning prone to err, to the Latin verb lebi, meaning to slip or fall.
Indeed, the first sense of labial in English was prone to slip err or lapse,
but that use is now obsolete.
Other lebi descendants in English include collapse,
elapse and prolapse as well as the word lapse itself.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.