Keywords: static

static means the member belongs to the class itself, not to any particular object. There is one shared copy, accessed via the class name.

A static variable has one copy for the entire class. An instance variable has a separate copy for each object.

Static methods and fields are hidden, not overridden. The call is resolved by the reference type at compile time, not by the object type at runtime. There is no polymorphism for statics.

The JVM wraps the exception in ExceptionInInitializerError and marks the class as permanently failed. Any future attempt to use the class throws NoClassDefFoundError.