order of magnitude

1 definition found

order of magnitude - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  order of magnitude
      n 1: a degree in a continuum of size or quantity; "it was on the
           order of a mile"; "an explosion of a low order of
           magnitude" [syn: order, order of magnitude]
      2: a number assigned to the ratio of two quantities; two
         quantities are of the same order of magnitude if one is less
         than 10 times as large as the other; the number of magnitudes
         that the quantities differ is specified to within a power of
         10 [syn: order of magnitude, magnitude]