Static

Static is an adjective meaning stationary or not changing. In technical usage, it denotes a fixed state or behavior that does not depend on time, and it appears across disciplines such as physics, engineering, and computing.

In physics, statics is a branch of mechanics that studies forces on bodies at rest or in equilibrium. Electrostatics is the study of electric charges at rest and the electric fields they produce. Static electricity refers to electric charges that are stationary and can accumulate on insulators, sometimes discharging suddenly as an electrostatic discharge.

In computing, static has several related meanings. Static storage duration refers to objects that persist for the lifetime of the program; in languages like C and C++, the static keyword can give a variable internal or external linkage or extend its lifetime. Static members in classes belong to the class itself rather than to any instance, and static methods can be invoked without creating an object. Some contexts also use static analysis to examine code without running it.

In web development, static content consists of fixed pages and resources delivered without real-time server-side processing. Static sites are typically served from content delivery networks and are easy to cache, though they require client-side scripts or backend services to provide dynamic behavior.

Other uses of static include general engineering and science terminology referring to non-moving parts of systems, and the broader notion of a static state as opposed to dynamic changes.