scale
/skeɪl/ noun C2- 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.
- A small piece of pigmented chitin, many of which coat the wings of a butterfly or moth to give them their color.
- A flake of skin of an animal afflicted with dermatitis.
- Part of an overlapping arrangement of many small, flat and hard protective layers forming a pinecone that flare when mature to release pine nut seeds.
- The flaky material sloughed off heated metal.
- Scale mail (as opposed to chain mail).
- Limescale.
- A scale insect.
Plural scales
Phrasal verbs and expressions
- scale back To make a reduction in the amount, extent, etc. of someth...
- scale down To reduce the size of something whilst maintaining propor...
- scale in To incrementally enter a position on an oversold market i...
- scale off To peel off
- scale out To scale up (a system) by adding more servers or nodes.
- scale up Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see scale,...
From the library
“I am endeavoring,” he thought, “to make this man happy; I look upon this restitution as a weight thrown into the scale to balance the evil I have wrought.
That gives you an idea of Moriarty’s gains and of the scale on which he works.
Miss Darcy was tall, and on a larger scale than Elizabeth; and, though little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, and her appearance womanly and graceful.
There, on a table, surrounded at some distance by a large and luxurious divan, every species of tobacco known,—from the yellow tobacco of Petersburg to the black of Sinai, and so on along the scale from Maryland and Porto Rico, to Latakia,—was exposed in pots of crackled earthenware of which the Dutch are so fond; beside them, in boxes of fragrant wood, were ranged, according to their size and quality, puros, regalias, havanas, and manillas; and, in an open cabinet, a collection of German pipes, of chibouques, with their amber mouth-pieces ornamented with coral, and of narghiles, with their long tubes of morocco, awaiting the caprice or the sympathy of the smokers.
Other matches
- scale An ordered, usually numerical sequence used for... A2
- scale To change the size of something whilst maintain... C1
- scale To remove the scales of. C2
- scale A device to measure mass or weight. C2
- scale back To make a reduction in the amount, extent, etc....
- scale down To reduce the size of something whilst maintain...
- scale in To incrementally enter a position on an oversol...
- scale off To peel off
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