From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmagnitudemag‧ni‧tude /ˈmæɡnɪtjuːd $ -tuːd/ ●○○ noun 1 [uncountable]BIG the great size or importance of somethingmagnitude of They didn’t seem to appreciate the magnitude of the problem.of such/this/similar etc magnitude We did not think the cuts would be of this magnitude. an increase of this order of magnitude (=size)2 [countable] technical the degree of brightness of a star3 [countable] technical the force of an earthquake
Examples from the Corpus
magnitude• The earthquake registered a magnitude of 6.8, according to early estimates.• It has a B-type spectrum, and is usually just below the fourth magnitude.• Fortunately there is a good comparison star of magnitude 6.6, also in the bowl.• The oil spillage in the Gulf was of such magnitude that its effects will last for decades.• But this is not meant to belittle the magnitude of the adaptive radiations that took place in the Vendian and Cambrian periods.• The budget deficit is no surprise, but the magnitude is.• This increases the magnitude of the vorticity, but because of continuity also reduces the cross-section of the vortex tube.• I cannot emphasize too strongly the magnitude of this problem.• Decisions of this magnitude should not be taken by one person alone.• We've never dealt with a problem of this magnitude before.order of magnitude• With care, about 12 harmonics may be obtained so that about an order of magnitude of frequency range is available.• In the infrared, extinction by dust is an order of magnitude smaller than in the visible portion of the spectrum.• Even with such an unsophisticated method Galileo's estimates turned out to be correct to within an order of magnitude.• We can, however, establish the correct order of magnitude from a number of sources.• These figures serve to indicate a relative order of magnitude.• We do find that, as before, imaging or pattern classification networks are several orders of magnitude simpler to train.• People are normally considered to be risk-averse over amounts of the order of magnitude of their incomes.• If rainfall is variant then the mixture of species increases by two or three orders of magnitude.Origin magnitude (1300-1400) Latin magnitudo, from magnus “great” 