scale
/skeɪl/ noun, verb
- noun (obsolete) A ladder; a series of steps; a means of ascending.
- noun An ordered, usually numerical sequence used for measurement; means of assigning a magnitude. “Please rate your experience on a scale from 1 to 10.”
- noun Size; scope. “There are some who question the scale of our ambitions.”
- noun The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance. “This map uses a scale of 1:10.”
- noun A line or bar associated with a drawing, used to indicate measurement when the image has been magnified or reduced.
- noun (music) A series of notes spanning an octave, tritave, or pseudo-octave, used to make melodies.
- noun A mathematical base for a numeral system; radix. “the decimal scale, the binary scale”
- noun Gradation; succession of ascending and descending steps and degrees; progressive series; scheme of comparative rank or order.
- verb (transitive) 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. “We should scale that up by a factor of 10.”
- verb (transitive) To climb to the top of. “Hilary and Norgay were the first known to have scaled Everest.”
- verb (intransitive, business, computing) To tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors. “That architecture won't scale to real-world environments.”
- verb (computing or systems engineering, of systems): To handle heavily increasing loads without breaking down.
- verb (business: entrepreneurship, marketing and venture management, coordinate term to "grow"): To increase revenues exponentially without proportional increases in costs.
- verb (transitive) To weigh, measure or grade according to a scale or system.
- verb (manufacturing, transitive) To take measurements from (an engineering drawing), treating them as (or as if) reliable dimensional instructions. “Every single drawing in the specification has a warning in its title block which reads, "Do not scale this drawing."”
- noun 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.
- noun A small piece of pigmented chitin, many of which coat the wings of a butterfly or moth to give them their color.
- noun A flake of skin of an animal afflicted with dermatitis.
- noun 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.
- noun (uncountable) The flaky material sloughed off heated metal.
Synonyms
descale scales scale of measurement graduated table ordered series scale leaf scurf exfoliation musical scale weighing machine plate shell surmount
Etymology
From Middle English scale, from Latin scāla, usually in plural scālae (“a flight of steps, stairs, staircase, ladder”), for *skand-slā, from scandō (“to 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.
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”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun The dish of a balance; hence, the balance itself; an instrument or machine for weighing; as, to turn the scale; --chiefly used in the plural when applied to the whole instrument or apparatus for weighing. Also used figuratively.
- noun The sign or constellation Libra. Platform scale. See under Platform. tip the scales, influence an action so as to change an outcome from one likely result to another.
- verb To weigh or measure according to a scale; to measure; also, to grade or vary according to a scale or system.
- noun One of the small, thin, membranous, bony or horny pieces which form the covering of many fishes and reptiles, and some mammals, belonging to the dermal part of the skeleton, or dermoskeleton. See Cycloid, Ctenoid, and Ganoid.
Etymology [AS. scale; perhaps influenced by the kindred Icel. skal balance, dish, akin also to D. schaal a scale, bowl, shell, G. schale, OHG. scala, Dan. skaal drinking cup, bowl, dish, and perh. to E. scale of a fish. Cf. Scale of a fish, Skull the brain case.]
Etymology [Cf. AS. scealu, scalu, a shell, parings; akin to D. schaal, G. schale, OHG. scala, Dan. & Sw. skal a shell, Dan. skiæl a fish scale, Goth. skalja tile, and E. shale, shell, and perhaps also to scale of a balance; butperhaps rather fr. OF. escale, escaile, F. écaille scale of a fish, and écale shell of beans, pease, egs, nuts, of German origin, and akin to Goth. skalja, G. schale. See Shale.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “scale”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details