Definition of "astatic" []

• Unsteady; unstable. (adjective)
• Physics Having no particular directional characteristics. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Quartz fibres have two great advantages over other forms of suspension when employed for any kind of torsion balance, from an ordinary more or less "astatic" galvanometer to the Cavendish apparatus."
• "There is much worry and misery in the world because so many are astatic, like a compass that has lost its loadstone."
• "The loafing or astatic mind will fall into morbid tendencies."