adiabatic

A graph of pressure as a function of volume, for an adiabatic process

Meanings

That occurs without gain or loss of heat (and thus with no change in entropy, in the quasistatic approximation).
That involves the slow change of the Hamiltonian of a system from its initial value to a final value.

19th-century coinage (introduced by W. J. M. Rankine in the 1860s) based on Ancient Greek ἀδιάβατος, used of terrain (rivers, forests) by Xenophon, from ἀ- + διά + βατός, from βαίνω.

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