order of magnitude

plural orders of magnitude

1. mathematicsThe 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, 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

   1 more example

   2011, Enrico Fermi, Wikisource (translator), Concerning a Contradiction between the Electrodynamic and Relativistic Theory of Electromagnetic Mass, 1922, Enrico Fermi, Über einen Widerspruch zwischen der elektrodynamischen und relativistischen Theorie der elektromagnetischen Masse, Physikalische Zeitschrift, v 23, pp 340-344, 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.

   Synonyms: OOM