Magnitude

How to spell magnitude

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce magnitude

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does magnitude mean?

1. nounThe great size, extent, or importance of something.
2. nounA numerical measure of the energy released by an earthquake.
3. nounA measure of how bright a star or other celestial object appears.

Magnitude in a sentence

• The board failed to grasp the magnitude of the financial loss.

• The quake registered a magnitude of seven on the seismograph.

• The faint star had a magnitude too low for the naked eye.

• Rescue teams were stunned by the sheer magnitude of the flooding.

• Scientists recorded the magnitude within minutes of the tremor.

• Astronomers logged the planet's magnitude throughout the night.

Where does magnitude come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin magnitudo, meaning 'greatness' or 'large size', which was built on the adjective magnus, literally 'great' or 'large'. English took it in during the late 1300s, at first simply to mean great size or extent. The same magnus root sits inside a whole family of familiar words, including magnificent, magnify, and the title Magna Carta, the 'Great Charter'. Over the centuries the noun gathered precise technical uses: astronomers adopted it for the brightness of stars, and later seismologists used it for the energy of earthquakes. The spelling trap is the silent run of the gn cluster and the unstressed -itude ending, which sounds like 'i-tood' but is written with that distinctive Latin suffix.

How the word is built

• magn- (great, large)
• -itude (noun suffix denoting a state or quality)