Hypertext Webster Gateway: "magnitude"
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
Magnitude \Mag"ni*tude\, n. [L. magnitudo, from magnus great.
See {Master}, and cf. {Maxim}.]
1. Extent of dimensions; size; -- applied to things that have
length, breath, and thickness.
Conceive those particles of bodies to be so disposed
amongst themselves, that the intervals of empty
spaces between them may be equal in magnitude to
them all. --Sir I.
Newton.
2. (Geom.) That which has one or more of the three
dimensions, length, breadth, and thickness.
3. Anything of which greater or less can be predicated, as
time, weight, force, and the like.
From WordNet (r) 1.7 (wn)
magnitude
n 1: the property of relative size or extent; "they tried to
predict the magnitude of the explosion"
2: 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 [syn: {order of magnitude}]
3: relative importance: "a problem of the first magnitude"
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