magnitude
pronunciation
How to pronounce magnitude in British English:
UK [ˈmæɡnɪtjuːd]
How to pronounce magnitude in American English:
US [ˈmæɡnɪtuːd]
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- Noun:
- the property of relative size or extent
- 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
- relative importance
Word Origin
- magnitude
- magnitude: [14] Magnitude is one of a large family of words for which English is indebted to Latin magnus ‘large’. This goes back to an Indo- European *meg- or *megh-, source also of Greek mégas ‘large’ (from which English gets the prefix mega-) and prehistoric Germanic *mikil-, ancestor of English much. Apart from magnitude, English descendants of magnus include magnanimous [16] (etymologically ‘large-minded’), magnate [15] (a ‘large’ or ‘important’ person), magnificat [12] (from the first words of Luke 1:46, Magnificat anima mea dominum ‘My soul doth magnify the lord’, where magnificat is the 3rd person present singular of Latin magnificāre, a derivative of magnus and source of English magnify [14]), magnificent [16] (etymologically ‘doing great deeds’), and magnum [18] (the application to a double-sized wine bottle is a modern one).In addition maxim and maximum come from the superlative of magnus and major and mayor from its comparative, and master and the monthname May could also be related.=> magnum, major, maxim, mayor, much
- magnitude (n.)
- c. 1400, "greatness of size or character," from Latin magnitudo "greatness, bulk, size," from magnus "great" (see magnate) + -tudo, suffix forming abstract nouns from adjectives and participles (see -tude). Meaning "size, extent" is from early 15c. Of stars, "brightness," from 1640s.
Example
- 1. Chinese seismologists said the quake was magnitude 7.1 .
- 2. Official warned that may also occur up to 7.1 magnitude aftershock .
- 3. Essentially , each successive magnitude is 33 times larger than the last .
- 4. But those outlays now seem modest given the magnitude of the crisis .
- 5. " In both magnitude and probability , climate change is an enormous problem , " the agency said .