Mobile Meaning
/ˈməʊ.baɪl/Definition, CEFR level A2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
adjCapable of being moved, especially on wheels.
adjPertaining to or by agency of mobile phones.
Sentence Examples
This type of mobile phone sells well.
America is a large country and its people are mobile.
Mobile phones are not permitted in the examination room.
Synonyms & Antonyms
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
CEFR Practice Quiz
The patient's broken leg was in a cast, so he was not ____ for weeks.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The new ____ application allows users to track their daily fitness goals and share their progress with their friends online.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin mōbilis (“easy to be moved, moveable”), from moveō (“move”). The video-gaming sense was coined by Richard Bartle to describe NPCs or creatures capable of moving "under their own power" in the 1978 video game Multi-User Dungeon. Bartle retracted an earlier claim of his that it was from the kinetic sculpture sense of mobile (for the "unpredictable but limited" motion of the hanging ornaments).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"A farmer could place an order for a new tractor part by text message and pay for it by mobile money-transfer. A supplier many miles away would then take the part to the local matternet station for airborne dispatch via drone."
— 2012 December 1, “An internet of airborne things”, in The Economist, volume 405, number 8813, page 3 (Technology Quarterly):
"the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition"
— 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 7, in The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:
"His finely cut features were capable of every variety of expression; they were, to use a French epithet, expressive as their epithets for all social qualities usually are, mobile in the extreme."
— 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “Another London Life”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 176:
"Mobiles squerking, mobiles chirping / Take the money and run"
— 2000, “Idioteque”, in Kid A, performed by Radiohead:
"Pinned against my neighbours, I could feel small hands, fleeting as lizards, fluttering lightly through my pockets in search of money, mobile, wallet."
— 2009, Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower:
Explore More A2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The patient's broken leg was in a cast, so he was not ____ for weeks.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The new ____ application allows users to track their daily fitness goals and share their progress with their friends online.