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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

order of magnitude en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • (Southern-England) audio

Etymology

18th century, in the sense "magnitude (brightness class) of a star", informed by the Greek τῶν μεγάλων τάξις (tôn megálōn táxis) (Ptolemy).

Meanings

  1. The class of scale or magnitude of any amount, where each class contains values of a fixed ratio (most often 10) to the class preceding it.
    • 2011, Enrico Fermi, Wikisource (translator), Concerning a Contradiction between the Electrodynamic and Relativistic Theory of Electromagnetic Mass, 1922, Enrico Fermi, Über einen Widerspruch zwischen der elektrodynamischen und relativistischen Theorie der elektromagnetischen Masse, Physikalische Zeitschrift, v 23, pp 340-344, However, we notice that although this contraction is of order of magnitude v²:c², it changes the most important terms of electromagnetic mass, i.e, the rest mass.
    • However, this pales to insignificance against the massive volume of spoken language, for with over 500 patrons, any given second of the lunch hour would result in a spoken word count in the thousands, and the whole lunch hour would see a word count orders of magnitude larger than 3000. 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 8:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
orders of magnitude Number=Plur lexicographic

Hypernyms

scale · order

Relateds

dex · ballpark figure

Synonyms

OOM

Translations (24)

ko 크기 자릿수 (class of scale) · tr büyüklük mertebesi (class of scale) · fr ordre de grandeur (class of scale) · fi suuruusluokka (class of scale) · ca ordre de magnitud (class of scale) · sv storleksordning (class of scale) · ja(class of scale) · uk порядок величини (class of scale) · vi bậc độ lớn (class of scale) · hu nagyságrend (class of scale) · de Größenordnung (class of scale) · th อันดับของขนาด (class of scale) · et suurusjärk (class of scale) · cmn 數量級 /数量级 (class of scale) · pl rząd wielkości (class of scale) · pt ordem de grandeza (class of scale) · kk реттік шама (class of scale) · nb størrelsesorden (class of scale) · fi kertaluokka (class of scale) · ko 크기 정도 (class of scale) · nl orde van grootte (class of scale) · ga ord méadaíochta (class of scale) · he סֵדֶר גֹּדֶל (class of scale) · es orden de magnitud (class of scale)

wikidata: Q518730