Word.ws English Dictionary

significant figures

significant figures is the plural of significant figure.

Meaning of significant figure

Noun

significant figure (plural significant figures)

  1. A digit that is meaningful with respect to the precision of a measurement; that is, excluding any leading zeroes, trailing rounding or placeholder zeroes, and non-zero digits not warranted by the accuracy of a derivation or measurement.
    • The speed was calculated by dividing 2314 metres by 71 seconds and reported as 32.5915 m/s, but since both the distance and time were measured only to the nearest whole number, there were actually only two significant figures in this result, i.e. 32.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see significant, figure.

Questions about significant figures

What is significant figures the plural of?
Significant figures is the plural of significant figure.

Words near significant figures in the dictionary

  1. significands
  2. significant
  3. significant digit
  4. significant digits
  5. significant figure
  6. significant figures
  7. significant other
  8. significant othered
  9. significant others
  10. significant wave height
  11. significant wave heights

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: significant figures (page history and authors); significant figure (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “significant figures.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/significant_figures. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.