order of magnitude
- noun
- /ˈɔrdər əv ˈmæɡnɪtjuːd/
- Specialized
- This technology can increase productivity by an order of magnitude compared to traditional methods.
- two orders of magnitude
- several orders of magnitude
- at least one order of magnitude
And so this really makes it an order of magnitude less uncertain than gold.
- And so this really makes it an order of magnitude less uncertain than gold.
- So this was this is orders of magnitude faster than that.
- It's that order of magnitude smaller than what CERN can detect right now.
- But I think he was he was like an order of magnitude ahead.
- It's a an order of magnitude less potent than psilocybin.
- It was the loneliest I've ever felt in my life by an order of magnitude.
- Yeah, we're gonna get that it it usually starts with with like this core innovation, like something that is orders of magnitude greater than what exists.
- Then there's Go, which had many orders of magnitude more degrees of freedom than than chess.
- So if YouTube grew the breadth of video content by orders of magnitude because it was free and easy for anyone to both create news videos.
- Meaning we add the energy that our atoms have is as many orders of magnitude lower than what you have at room temperature.
Examples
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The median concentration for the participants with pleural abnormalities was an order of magnitude greater.
Academic text (2012) -
In China, industrial zoned land is an order of magnitude cheaper than residential land.
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But as an order of magnitude it is something like that.
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We're we're talking about orders of magnitude, yes.
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Another half an hour out of commission might increase that by an order of magnitude.
Fiction book (1996) -
An estimate with a range of three orders of magnitude, however, does not provide much useful information.
Academic text (1993) -
As I said, it's a number about the same order of magnitude as the electron charge.
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Modern facilities using scrubbers can reduce this risk by an order of magnitude.
Academic text (1993) -
The jump in peanut-shelling production represents an order of magnitude increase appropriate for the user.
Academic text (2011) -
The estimate of damages on the order of magnitude found in the Wisconsin Study is remarkable.
Academic text (2017)
Synonyms
A level showing how big or strong something is
A number that shows size using steps where each step is ten times
Surface Forms
Morphology
A learner who knows 'order' (degree/level) and 'magnitude' (size/extent) can plausibly infer that 'order of magnitude' refers to a level or class of size, so the basic compositional sense is accessible. However, the conventional quantitative meaning (specifically steps of ten / a logarithmic scale) is technical and not fully predictable from the parts, so prior exposure or domain knowledge is usually required.
Etymology
Order of magnitude comes from a simple number idea used to compare very different sizes. The words order and magnitude show a picture of steps: each order is about 'ten times' bigger than the one before, so the phrase means a rough 'level' of size or amount.