English

Etymology 1

Noun

1. An ordered numerical sequence used for measurement.

   Please rate your experience on a scale from 1 to 10.

2. Size; scope.

   The Holocaust was insanity on an enormous scale.

   There are some who question the scale of our ambitions.

3. The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance.

   This map uses a scale of 1:10.

4. A means of assigning a magnitude.

   The magnitude of an earthquake is measured on the open-ended Richter scale.

5. A series of notes spanning an octave, tritave, or pseudo-octave, used to make melodies.

Hyponyms

Verb

1. 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.

   We should scale that up by a factor of 10.

2. To climb.

   Hilary and Norgay were the first known to have scaled Everest.

3. (computing) To tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors.

   That architecture won't scale to real-world environments.

Etymology 2

Noun

1. 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.
2. A small piece of pigmented chitin, many of which coat the wings of a butterfly or moth to give them their color.
3. A flake of skin of an animal afflicted with dermatitis.
4. A pine nut of a pinecone.
5. The flaky material sloughed off heated metal.
6. Scale mail (as opposed to chain mail).
7. Limescale

Verb

1. To remove the scales of.

   Please scale that fish for dinner.

2. To become scaly; to produce or develop scales.

   The dry weather is making my skin scale.

Etymology 3

Noun

1. A device to measure mass or weight.

   After the long, lazy winter I was afraid to get on the scale.

2. Either of the pans, trays, or dishes of a balance.