magnitude

The word “magnitude” means the size, scale, or importance of something. In plain terms, how big, strong, or significant something is — often used for disasters, problems, earthquakes, and star brightness.

“Magnitude” is pronounced MAG-niht-yood (/ˈmæɡnɪtjuːd/ in IPA).

Here is “magnitude” used in a sentence: “Officials are only now grasping the magnitude of the disaster.”

“Magnitude” is a noun.

The word “magnitude” comes from Latin. From Latin magnitudo, "greatness", built from magnus, "great".

“Magnitude” is a fairly common word in modern English.

“Magnitude” has 3 distinct senses listed in this dictionary. The most common is: the size, scale, or importance of something.

Magnitude is a single number on a scale that measures how strong the earthquake itself is at its source. Intensity measures how strongly the shaking is felt, and how much damage it causes, at a particular place, so it varies from location to location. One earthquake has one magnitude but many different intensities.

No, the scale runs the opposite way to what most people expect. In astronomy, magnitude measures how bright a star or other object appears, and lower numbers mean brighter objects; the very brightest objects have negative magnitudes. A star of magnitude 1 therefore appears much brighter than a star of magnitude 6.

In everyday use, largely yes: magnitude refers to the size, scale, or importance of something, as in "the magnitude of the task," and it belongs to a formal register. It also has technical senses, as the number measuring an earthquake's strength and the scale of a star's apparent brightness, where no plainer word substitutes.