/skeɪl/, [skeɪ̯(ə)ɫ], /skæɪl/
OriginFrom 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.
- obsoleteA ladder; a series of steps; a means of ascending.
- An ordered, usually numerical sequence used for measurement; means of assigning a magnitude.
“Please rate your experience on a scale from 1 to 10.”
“The magnitude of an earthquake is measured on the open-ended Richter scale.”
- Size; scope.
“There are some who question the scale of our ambitions.”
“We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales out”
- The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance.
“This map uses a scale of 1:10.”
- 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.”
- A series of notes spanning an octave, tritave, or pseudo-octave, used to make melodies.
- A mathematical base for a numeral system; radix.
“the decimal scale, the binary scale”
- 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.”
“City's players and supporters travelled from one end of the emotional scale to the other in those vital seconds, providing a truly remarkable piece of football theatre and the most dramatic conclusion”
- 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.”
- countable, uncountablePart of an overlapping arrangement of many small, flat and hard pieces of keratin covering the skin of an animal, particularly a fish or reptile.
“Fish that, with their fins and shining scales, / Glide under the green wave.”
- countable, uncountableA small piece of pigmented chitin, many of which coat the wings of a butterfly or moth to give them their color.
- countable, uncountableA flake of skin of an animal afflicted with dermatitis.
- countable, uncountablePart of an overlapping arrangement of many small, flat and hard protective layers forming a pinecone that flare when mature to release pine nut seeds.
- uncountableThe flaky material sloughed off heated metal.
- countable, uncountableScale mail (as opposed to chain mail).
- uncountableLimescale.
- countable, uncountableA scale insect.
- countable, uncountableThe thin metallic side plate of the handle of a pocketknife.
- US, uncountableAn infestation of scale insects on a plant; commonly thought of as, or mistaken for, a disease.
- A device to measure mass or weight.
“After the long, lazy winter I was afraid to get on the scale.”
- Either of the pans, trays, or dishes of a balance or scales.
- transitiveTo change the size of something whilst maintaining proportion; especially to change a process in order to produce much larger amounts of the final product.
“We should scale that up by a factor of 10.”
- transitiveTo climb to the top of.
“Hilary and Norgay were the first known to have scaled Everest.”
“At last I came to the great barrier-cliffs; and after three days of mad effort—of maniacal effort—I scaled them. I built crude ladders; I wedged sticks in narrow fissures; I chopped toe-holds and fing”
“A solitary rock is always attractive. All right-minded people feel an overwhelming desire to scale and sit upon it.”
- intransitiveTo tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors.
“That architecture won't scale to real-world environments.”
- transitiveTo weigh, measure or grade according to a scale or system.
“Scaling his present bearing with his past.”
“The kitchen-dining-buffet car scales 49.2 tons.”
- transitiveTo 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.
“Every single print that goes out our door has a warning in its title block telling the world, "Do not scale this drawing."”
- transitiveTo remove the scales of.
“Please scale that fish for dinner.”
- intransitiveTo become scaly; to produce or develop scales.
“The dry weather is making my skin scale.”
- transitiveTo strip or clear of scale; to descale.
“to scale the inside of a boiler”
- transitiveTo take off in thin layers or scales, as tartar from the teeth; to pare off, as a surface.
“1684-1690, Thomas Burnet, Sacred Theory of the Earth
if all the mountains and hills were scaled, and the earth made even”
- intransitiveTo separate and come off in thin layers or laminae.
“Some sandstone scales by exposure.”
“Those that cast their shell are the lobster and crab; the old skins are found, but the old shells never; so it is likely that they scale off.”
- Scotland, UK, dialectalTo scatter; to spread.
- transitiveTo clean, as the inside of a cannon, by the explosion of a small quantity of powder.
“cannons […]caused to be scaled and loaded”
Formsscales(plural) · scales(present, singular, third-person) · scaling(participle, present) · scaled(participle, past) · scaled(past)