scale

noun

An ordered, usually numerical sequence used for measurement; means of assigning a magnitude.

Size; scope.

The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance.

A device to measure mass or weight.

(music) A series of notes spanning an octave, tritave, or pseudo-octave, used to make melodies.

Gradation; succession of ascending and descending steps and degrees; progressive series; scheme of comparative rank or order.

A line or bar associated with a drawing, used to indicate measurement when the image has been magnified or reduced.

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.

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.

A small piece of pigmented chitin, many of which coat the wings of a butterfly or moth to give them their color.

A flake of skin of an animal afflicted with dermatitis.

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.

(uncountable) Limescale.

(uncountable, US) An infestation of scale insects on a plant; commonly thought of as, or mistaken for, a disease.

Scale mail (as opposed to chain mail).

The thin metallic side plate of the handle of a pocketknife.

A mathematical base for a numeral system; radix.

A scale insect.

Either of the pans, trays, or dishes of a balance or scales.

(uncountable) The flaky material sloughed off heated metal.

(obsolete) A ladder; a series of steps; a means of ascending.

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.

(transitive) To weigh, measure or grade according to a scale or system.

(manufacturing, transitive) To 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.

(transitive) To climb to the top of.

(intransitive, computing) To tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors.

(transitive) To remove the scales of.

(intransitive) To become scaly; to produce or develop scales.

(transitive) To strip or clear of scale; to descale.

(transitive) To take off in thin layers or scales, as tartar from the teeth; to pare off, as a surface.

(intransitive) To separate and come off in thin layers or laminae.

(transitive) To clean, as the inside of a cannon, by the explosion of a small quantity of powder.

(UK, Scotland, dialect) To scatter; to spread.

Roots

scalascale- · Latin · ladder, flight of stairs

Synonyms for scale

scurfn magnituden weighbridgen sizen proportionsn dimensionsn gaugen bignessn heightn gamutn

Synonyms & related words for scale

Find synonyms, related words, and the definition of scale — including scurf, magnitude, weighbridge, size, proportions, dimensions. Dendril is a free visual thesaurus that shows them on an interactive map where stronger matches sit closer to the center — no signup, no ads.

Words related to scale

Explore words related to scale — words associated with it, words that go with it, and its nearest matches in meaning. Related words include descale, overscale, squama, unscaled, scalepan, rescale, stadiometer, orometer. Click any word to make it the center of the map and keep exploring the web of connections.

Synonyms for scale

Common synonyms for scale include scurf, magnitude, weighbridge, size, proportions, dimensions, gauge, bigness — words that share a close meaning. Hover or tap any word on the map for its definition and part of speech.

Where does scale come from?

The word scale breaks down into one root of Latin origin: the root scale, from Latin scala (“ladder, flight of stairs”). Explore each root to see other English words built from the same source.