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# magnitude

«magnitude» in Mova's school dictionary: **The size or how big something is** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 4 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (magnitude, magnitudes)

### meaning for a pupil

1) The size or how big something is. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#m1)

2) How important or serious something is (a problem of great magnitude). [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#m2)

3) (science) The strength of an earthquake, measured on a scale. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#m3)

4) (science) The brightness of a star. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#m4)

5) (maths) The size of a number or vector without its sign or direction. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#m5)

### sense in the lessons

In science, earthquake magnitude (a magnitude 6 earthquake), star brightness, and size of forces. In maths, comparing the magnitude of numbers (order of magnitude = roughly how many tens or powers of ten). Phrases: «of this magnitude», «order of magnitude», «magnitude of the earthquake».

### examples

- The earthquake had a magnitude of 7. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#x1)
- We didn't realise the magnitude of the problem. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#x2)
- The magnitude of −5 is 5. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#x3)
- Sirius is the brightest star — its magnitude is very low. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#x4)
- A force of 10 newtons has a greater magnitude than 6 newtons. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#x5)
- 1,000 is three orders of magnitude bigger than 1. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#x6)
- The king's palace attained to the stupendous magnitude of Periwinkle's baby house, and stood in the center of a spacious square, which could hardly have been covered by our hearth-rug. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/#x7)

### note

Mostly uncountable. Formal; everyday: «size», «importance». Traps: on the earthquake scale, each step up is about 10 times more shaking, so magnitude 6 is not just a little more than 5; for stars, a SMALLER magnitude number means BRIGHTER. In maths: magnitude ignores the minus sign (absolute value).

### In the corpora

- [Earthquake size is given by magnitude, and each step up means about 32 times more energy released.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/44-earthquakes/8/)
- [The strongest earthquake ever recorded was in Chile in 1960, magnitude about 9.5.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/44-earthquakes/9/)
- [The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, after a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra, killed about 230,000 people in 14 countries.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/45-tsunamis/10/)
- [In 2011 a magnitude 9 earthquake sent a tsunami into Japan that killed about 18,000 people and damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/45-tsunamis/11/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «magnitude» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/M/magnitude/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.