Did You Know?
"Immutable" comes to us through Middle English from Latin "immutabilis," meaning "unable to change." "Immutabilis" was formed by combining the negative prefix "in-" with "mutabilis," which comes from the Latin verb "mutare" and means "to change." Some other English words that can be traced back to "mutare" are "commute" (the earliest sense of which is simply "to change or alter"), "mutate" ("to undergo significant and basic alteration"), "permute" ("to change the order or arrangement of"), and "transmute" ("to change or alter in form, appearance, or nature"). There's also the antonym of "immutable" -- "mutable" -- which of course can mean "prone to change" and "capable of change or of being changed."