magnitude

«magnitude» in Mova's school dictionary: The size or how big something is — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 4 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (magnitude, magnitudes)

meaning for a pupil

1) The size or how big something is. tree →

2) How important or serious something is (a problem of great magnitude). tree →

3) (science) The strength of an earthquake, measured on a scale. tree →

4) (science) The brightness of a star. tree →

5) (maths) The size of a number or vector without its sign or direction. tree →

sense in the lessons

In science, earthquake magnitude (a magnitude 6 earthquake), star brightness, and size of forces. In maths, comparing the magnitude of numbers (order of magnitude = roughly how many tens or powers of ten). Phrases: «of this magnitude», «order of magnitude», «magnitude of the earthquake».

examples

• The earthquake had a magnitude of 7. tree →
• We didn't realise the magnitude of the problem. tree →
• The magnitude of −5 is 5. tree →
• Sirius is the brightest star — its magnitude is very low. tree →
• A force of 10 newtons has a greater magnitude than 6 newtons. tree →
• 1,000 is three orders of magnitude bigger than 1. tree →
• The king's palace attained to the stupendous magnitude of Periwinkle's baby house, and stood in the center of a spacious square, which could hardly have been covered by our hearth-rug. tree →

note

Mostly uncountable. Formal; everyday: «size», «importance». Traps: on the earthquake scale, each step up is about 10 times more shaking, so magnitude 6 is not just a little more than 5; for stars, a SMALLER magnitude number means BRIGHTER. In maths: magnitude ignores the minus sign (absolute value).

In the corpora

• Earthquake size is given by magnitude, and each step up means about 32 times more energy released.
• The strongest earthquake ever recorded was in Chile in 1960, magnitude about 9.5.
• The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, after a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra, killed about 230,000 people in 14 countries.
• In 2011 a magnitude 9 earthquake sent a tsunami into Japan that killed about 18,000 people and damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «magnitude» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.