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Scale
Definitions
- 1 A ladder; a series of steps; a means of ascending. obsolete
- 2 Part of an overlapping arrangement of many small, flat and hard pieces of keratin covering the skin of an animal, particularly a fish or reptile. countable, uncountable
"Fish that, with their fins and shining scales, / Glide under the green wave."
- 3 A device to measure mass or weight.
"After the long, lazy winter I was afraid to get on the scale."
- 4 a flattened rigid plate forming part of the body covering of many animals wordnet
- 5 An ordered, usually numerical sequence used for measurement; means of assigning a magnitude.
"Please rate your experience on a scale from 1 to 10."
Show 26 more definitions
- 6 A small piece of pigmented chitin, many of which coat the wings of a butterfly or moth to give them their color. countable, uncountable
- 7 Either of the pans, trays, or dishes of a balance or scales.
- 8 a metal sheathing of uniform thickness (such as the shield attached to an artillery piece to protect the gunners) wordnet
- 9 Size; scope.
"There are some who question the scale of our ambitions."
- 10 A flake of skin of an animal afflicted with dermatitis. countable, uncountable
- 11 an indicator having a graduated sequence of marks wordnet
- 12 The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance.
"This map uses a scale of 1:10."
- 13 Part of an overlapping arrangement of many small, flat and hard protective layers forming a pinecone that flare when mature to release pine nut seeds. countable, uncountable
- 14 a measuring instrument for weighing; shows amount of mass wordnet
- 15 A line or bar associated with a drawing, used to indicate measurement when the image has been magnified or reduced.
"Even though precision can be carried to an extreme, the scales which now are drawn in (and usually connected to an appropriate figure by an arrow) will allow derivation of meaningful measurements."
- 16 The flaky material sloughed off heated metal. uncountable
- 17 (music) a series of notes differing in pitch according to a specific scheme (usually within an octave) wordnet
- 18 A series of notes spanning an octave, tritave, or pseudo-octave, used to make melodies.
- 19 Scale mail (as opposed to chain mail). countable, uncountable
- 20 a thin flake of dead epidermis shed from the surface of the skin wordnet
- 21 A mathematical base for a numeral system; radix.
"the decimal scale, the binary scale"
- 22 Limescale. uncountable
- 23 a specialized leaf or bract that protects a bud or catkin wordnet
- 24 Gradation; succession of ascending and descending steps and degrees; progressive series; scheme of comparative rank or order.
"There is a certain scale of duties […] which for want of studying in right order, all the world is in confusion."
- 25 A scale insect. countable, uncountable
- 26 relative magnitude wordnet
- 27 A standard amount of money to be paid for a service, for example union-negotiated amounts received by a performer or writer; similar to wage scale or pay grade.
"Sally wasn't the star of the show, so she was glad to be paid scale."
- 28 The thin metallic side plate of the handle of a pocketknife. countable, uncountable
- 29 the ratio between the size of something and a representation of it wordnet
- 30 An infestation of scale insects on a plant; commonly thought of as, or mistaken for, a disease. US, uncountable
- 31 an ordered reference standard wordnet
- 1 To change the size of something whilst maintaining proportion; especially to change a process in order to produce much larger amounts of the final product. transitive
"We should scale that up by a factor of 10."
- 2 To remove the scales of. transitive
"Please scale that fish for dinner."
- 3 size or measure according to a scale wordnet
- 4 To climb to the top of. transitive
"Hilary and Norgay were the first known to have scaled Everest."
- 5 To become scaly; to produce or develop scales. intransitive
"The dry weather is making my skin scale."
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- 6 measure with or as if with scales wordnet
- 7 To tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors. intransitive
"That architecture won't scale to real-world environments."
- 8 To strip or clear of scale; to descale. transitive
"to scale the inside of a boiler"
- 9 remove the scales from wordnet
- 10 To weigh, measure or grade according to a scale or system. transitive
"Scaling his present bearing with his past."
- 11 To take off in thin layers or scales, as tartar from the teeth; to pare off, as a surface. transitive
"1684-1690, Thomas Burnet, Sacred Theory of the Earth if all the mountains and hills were scaled, and the earth made even"
- 12 pattern, make, regulate, set, measure, or estimate according to some rate or standard wordnet
- 13 To take measurements from (an engineering drawing), treating them as (or as if) reliable dimensional instructions. This practice often works but can produce latently incorrect results and is thus usually deprecated. transitive
"Every single print that goes out our door has a warning in its title block telling the world, "Do not scale this drawing.""
- 14 To separate and come off in thin layers or laminae. intransitive
"Some sandstone scales by exposure."
- 15 climb up by means of a ladder wordnet
- 16 To scatter; to spread. Scotland, UK, dialectal
- 17 reach the highest point of wordnet
- 18 To clean, as the inside of a cannon, by the explosion of a small quantity of powder. transitive
"cannons […]caused to be scaled and loaded"
- 19 take by attacking with scaling ladders wordnet
- 20 measure by or as if by a scale wordnet
Etymology
From Middle English scale, from Latin scāla, usually in plural scālae (“a flight of steps, stairs, staircase, ladder”), for *skand-slā, from scandō (“I climb”); see scan, ascend, descend, etc. Doublet of scala.
From Middle English scale, from Latin scāla, usually in plural scālae (“a flight of steps, stairs, staircase, ladder”), for *skand-slā, from scandō (“I climb”); see scan, ascend, descend, etc. Doublet of scala.
From Middle English scale, from Old French escale, from Frankish and/or Old High German skala, from Proto-Germanic *skalō. Cognate with Old English sċealu (“shell, husk”), whence the modern doublet shale. Further cognate with Dutch schaal, German Schale, French écale.
From Middle English scale, from Old French escale, from Frankish and/or Old High German skala, from Proto-Germanic *skalō. Cognate with Old English sċealu (“shell, husk”), whence the modern doublet shale. Further cognate with Dutch schaal, German Schale, French écale.
Inherited from Northern Middle English scale (non-Northern scole), from Old Norse skál (“bowl”) from Proto-Germanic *skēlō. Compare Danish skål (“bowl, cup”), Dutch schaal, German Schale, Old High German scāla, Old English scealu (“cup”).
See also for "scale"
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