Definition of "metastable" []

• Of, relating to, or being an unstable and transient but relatively long-lived state of a chemical or physical system, as of a supersaturated solution or an excited atom. (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.

• "This spring (a period of great disappointment for our farmers) was a period of the so-called metastable conditions of rain clouds."
• "Setup or hold violations cause the output of the flip-flop to enter a symmetrically balanced transient state, called a metastable state."
• "Technetium-99m, where "m" stands for "metastable" -, one resorts to another isotope, Molybdenum-99."