scale

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

  1. 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.
    • Fish that, with their fins and shining scales, / Glide under the green wave. - 1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert...
  2. A small piece of pigmented chitin, many of which coat the wings of a butterfly or moth to give them their color.
  3. A flake of skin of an animal afflicted with dermatitis.
  4. 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.
  5. The flaky material sloughed off heated metal.
  6. Scale mail (as opposed to chain mail).
  7. Limescale.
  8. A scale insect.
  9. The thin metallic side plate of the handle of a pocketknife.
  10. An infestation of scale insects on a plant; commonly thought of as, or mistaken for, a disease.

Origin

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.

Forms

scales

Derived

antiscalant antiscale bigscale citricola scale cotton scale enscale hairscale hammerscale interscale iron scale lac scale largescale lateral scale leaf-scale mill scale overscaling paraffin scale pearlscale San Jose scale scale armor scaleback scale bark scaleboard scaledrake

Noun obsolete

  1. A ladder; a series of steps; a means of ascending.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 outside of human...
  4. The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance.
    • This map uses a scale of 1:10.
  5. 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. - 1992, Rudolf...
  6. A series of notes spanning an octave, tritave, or pseudo-octave, used to make melodies.
  7. A mathematical base for a numeral system; radix.
    • the decimal scale, the binary scale
  8. 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. - 1643, J[ohn] M[ilton], The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: […], London: […] T[homas] P[aine] and...
    • 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 to a season in...
  9. 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.

Origin

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.

Forms

scales

Hyponyms

Mercalli scale Palermo scale Richter scale wage scale Arabic scale blue scale blues scale brown soft scale bugle scale Byzantine Music scale chromatic scale diatonic scale diminished scale dodecuple scale Enhanced Fujita scale gapped scale hair scale Istrian scale major scale minor scale modal scale moment magnitude scale musical scale octatonic scale

Related

degree ordinal variable

Derived

altered scale at scale broadscale counterscale diseconomies of scale economies of scale eigenscale exascale femtoscale fieldscale full-scale gigascale global-scale gray-scale grayscale greyscale Gunter's scale gyroscale hyperscale industrial scale Internet-scale large-scale logscale long scale

Noun Entry 3

  1. A device to measure mass or weight.
    • After the long, lazy winter I was afraid to get on the scale.

    Synonyms: scales

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

Origin

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”).

Forms

scales

Derived

platform scale sample scale scalebeam scaleful scaleman scalepan suspension scale tip the scale torsion scale turn the scale

Verb Entry 4

  1. To remove the scales of.
    • Please scale that fish for dinner.

    Synonyms: descale

  2. To become scaly; to produce or develop scales.
    • The dry weather is making my skin scale.
  3. To strip or clear of scale; to descale.
    • to scale the inside of a boiler
  4. To 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
  5. To 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. - 1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or...
  6. To scatter; to spread.
  7. To clean, as the inside of a cannon, by the explosion of a small quantity of powder.
    • cannons […]caused to be scaled and loaded - 1816, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], Tales of My Landlord, […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for...

Forms

scales scaling scaled

Derived

rescale scalability scalable scale off scaleproof scaler unscale

Verb Entry 5

  1. 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.
  2. To 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 finger-holds with my...
    • A solitary rock is always attractive. All right-minded people feel an overwhelming desire to scale and sit upon it. - 1932, Dorothy L Sayers, chapter 1, in Have his Carcase:
  3. To tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors.
    • That architecture won't scale to real-world environments.
  4. To weigh, measure or grade according to a scale or system.
    • Scaling his present bearing with his past. - c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […]...
    • The kitchen-dining-buffet car scales 49.2 tons. - 1962 July, G. Freeman Allen, “The New "Rheingold"”, in Modern Railways, page 25:
  5. 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."

Forms

scales scaling scaled

Hyponyms

scale back scale down scale out scale up

Related

scaling ladder

Derived

autoscale blitzscale downscale prescale rescale scalability scalable scale in scaler unscale