average
pronunciation
How to pronounce average in British English:
UK [ˈævərɪdʒ]
How to pronounce average in American English:
US [ˈævərɪdʒ]
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- Noun:
- a statistic describing the location of a distribution
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- Verb:
- amount to or come to an average, without loss or gain
- achieve or reach on average
- compute the average of
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- Adjective:
- approximating the statistical norm or average or expected value
- lacking special distinction, rank, or status; commonly encountered
- of no exceptional quality or ability
- around the middle of a scale of evaluation of physical measures
- relating to or constituting the most frequent value in a distribution
- relating to or constituting the middle value of an ordered set of values (or the average of the middle two in an even-numbered set)
Word Origin
- average
- average: [15] The word average has a devious history. It began in Arabic, as ‘awārīya, the plural of ‘awār, a noun derived from the verb ‘āra ‘mutilate’; this was used as a commercial term, denoting ‘damaged merchandise’. The first European language to adopt it was Italian, as avaria, and it passed via Old French avarie into English (where in the 16th century it acquired its -age ending, probably by association with the then semantically similar damage).Already by this time it had come to signify the ‘financial loss incurred through damage to goods in transit’, and this passed in the 17th century to the ‘equal sharing of such loss by those with a financial interest in the goods’, and eventually, in the 18th century, to the current (mathematical and general) sense of ‘mean’.
- average (n.)
- late 15c., "financial loss incurred through damage to goods in transit," from French avarie "damage to ship," and Italian avaria; a word from 12c. Mediterranean maritime trade (compare Spanish averia; other Germanic forms, Dutch avarij, German haferei, etc., also are from Romanic languages), which is of uncertain origin. Sometimes traced to Arabic 'arwariya "damaged merchandise." Meaning shifted to "equal sharing of such loss by the interested parties." Transferred sense of "statement of a medial estimate" is first recorded 1735. The mathematical extension is from 1755.
- average (adj.)
- 1770; see average (n.).
- average (v.)
- 1769, from average (n.). Related: Averaged; averaging.
Example
- 1. But this is an average .
- 2. But the average is misleading .
- 3. The average age was 42 .
- 4. The average update interval is even longer than before .
- 5. The average person needs 2000 calories each day .