order of magnitude

Noun

order of magnitude (plural orders of magnitude)

1. The class of scale or magnitude of any amount, where each class contains values of a fixed ratio (most often 10) to the class preceding it.
   • However, we notice that although this contraction is of order of magnitude v²:c², it changes the most important terms of electromagnetic mass, i.e, the rest mass.2011, Enrico Fermi, Wikisource (translator), Concerning a Contradiction between the Electrodynamic and Relativistic Theory of Electromagnetic Mass, 1922, Enrico Fermi, Über einen Widerspruch zwischen...
   • However, this pales to insignificance against the massive volume of spoken language, for with over 500 patrons, any given second of the lunch hour would result in a spoken word count in the thousands, and the whole lunch hour would see a word count orders of magnitude larger than 3000.2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 8

   Synonyms:

   OOM