scale

Meanings

Noun

• A ladder; a series of steps; a means of ascending.
• An ordered, usually numerical sequence used for measurement, means of assigning a magnitude.
• Size; scope.
• The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance.
• A line or bar associated with a drawing, used to indicate measurement when the image has been magnified or reduced.
• A series of notes spanning an octave, tritave, or pseudo-octave, used to make melodies.
• A mathematical base for a numeral system; radix.
• Gradation; succession of ascending and descending steps and degrees; progressive series; scheme of comparative rank or order.
• A standard amount of money to be received by a performer or writer, negotiated by a union.
• 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.
• The flaky material sloughed off heated metal.
• Scale mail (as opposed to chain mail).
• Limescale.
• A scale insect.
• The thin metallic side plate of the handle of a pocketknife.
• A device to measure mass or weight.
• Either of the pans, trays, or dishes of a balance or scales.

Verb

• 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.
• To climb to the top of.
• To tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors.
• To weigh, measure or grade according to a scale or system.
• To remove the scales of.
• To become scaly; to produce or develop scales.
• To strip or clear of scale; to descale.
• To take off in thin layers or scales, as tartar from the teeth; to pare off, as a surface.
• To separate and come off in thin layers or laminae.
• To scatter; to spread.
• To clean, as the inside of a cannon, by the explosion of a small quantity of powder.

Related

Narrower meaning words

• Arabic scale
• Byzantine Music scale
• chromatic scale
• diatonic scale
• diminished scale
• major scale
• minor scale
• modal scale
• octatonic scale
• pentatonic scale
• Persian scale
• Phrygian dominant scale
• whole tone scale
• en
• Celsius scale
• Delisle scale
• Fahrenheit scale
• Kelvin scale
• Newton scale
• Rankin scale
• Réaumur scale
• Rømer scale
• timescale
• Kinsey scale
• scale back
• scale down
• scale up

Origin

• From Middle English scale, from Latin scāla, usually in plural scālae, for *scadla, from scandō; see scan, ascend, descend, etc. scala.
• 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, whence the modern doublet shale. Further cognate with Dutch schaal, German Schale, French écale. Also related to English shell, French écaille, Italian scaglia.
• From Old Norse skál ("bowl"). Compare Danish skål ("bowl, cup"), Dutch schaal; German Schale; Old High German scāla; Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌻𐌾𐌰, Old English scealu. Cognate with scale, as in Etymology 2.