Magnitude (Noun)
Meaning 1
The property of relative size or extent (whether large or small); "they tried to predict the magnitude of the explosion"; "about the magnitude of a small pea".
Classification
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects.
Hyponyms
Related Words
Meaning 2
A number assigned to the ratio of two quantities; two quantities are of the same order of magnitude if one is less than 10 times as large as the other; the number of magnitudes that the quantities differ is specified to within a power of 10.
Classification
Nouns denoting relations between people or things or ideas.
Examples
- The two companies' annual revenues are of the same order of magnitude, with both being in the tens of billions of dollars.
- The difference in magnitude between the largest and smallest galaxies in the observable universe is many orders of magnitude.
- Scientists often use orders of magnitude to describe the enormous scale of cosmic phenomena, such as the distance between stars or the size of black holes.
- In engineering, the magnitude of forces and stresses acting on a system is crucial in determining its stability and safety.
- The Richter scale measures the magnitude of earthquakes by comparing the seismic waves they produce to those of a standard earthquake.
Synonyms
Hypernyms
Meaning 3
Relative importance; "a problem of the first magnitude".
Classification
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects.