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Climb vs Scale - What's the difference?

climb | scale |

Scale is a synonym of climb.



In intransitive terms the difference between climb and scale

is that climb is to jump high while scale is to separate and come off in thin layers or laminae.

In transitive terms the difference between climb and scale

is that climb is to move (especially up and down something) by gripping with the hands and using the feet while scale is to clean, as the inside of a cannon, by the explosion of a small quantity of powder.

climb

English

Verb

  • To ascend; rise; to go up.
    • Prices climbed steeply.
  • * Dryden
    • Black vapours climb aloft, and cloud the day.
  • To mount; to move upwards on.
    • They climbed the mountain.
    Climbing a tree
  • To scale; to get to the top of something.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2010, date=May 22, author=David Harrison
    • , title=American boy, 13, is youngest person to climb Everest , work=Daily Telegraph online citation , page= , passage=He is a curly-haired schoolboy barely in his teens, but 13-year-old Jordan Romero from California has become the youngest person to climb Mount Everest.}}
  • To move (especially up and down something) by gripping with the hands and using the feet.
  • * 1900 , (James Frazer), (The Golden Bough) Chapter 65
    • A priest clad in a white robe climbs the tree and with a golden sickle cuts the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloth.
  • * 1900 , , ''(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)
    • She thought she must have been mistaken at first, for none of the scarecrows in Kansas ever wink; but presently the figure nodded its head to her in a friendly way. Then she climbed down from the fence and walked up to it, while Toto ran around the pole and barked.
  • * 2008 , Tony Atkins, Dragonhawk - the Turning
    • Cutter and Bolan climbed around the furniture and piled into the back of the truck.
  • to practise the sport of climbing
  • to jump high
  • * {{quote-news, year=2010, date=December 28
    • , author=Paul Fletcher, title=Man City 4 - 0 Aston Villa, work=BBC citation , page= , passage=The defender climbed majestically at the near post to convert Johnson's corner. }}
  • * {{quote-news, year=2008, date=September 13
    • , title=Ospreys Glasgow Magners League, work=South Wales Evening Post citation , page= , passage=As the game moved towards injury time, the Ospreys forced a line-out which Jonathan Thomas climbed high to take.}}
  • * {{quote-news, year=2001, date=December 29, author=Derick Allsop
    • , title=Bolton's nine men hit back to steal a point, work=Daily Telegraph online citation , page= , passage=Four minutes of stoppage time were virtually up when Ricketts climbed to head in the equaliser from substitute Nicky Southall's centre.}}
  • To move to a higher position on the social ladder.
  • (botany) Of plants, to grow upwards by clinging to something.

    • Usage notes

    In the past, the forms clomb'' and ''clumb were encountered as simple past and past participle forms; these forms are now archaic or dialectical.

    Derived terms

    * climb down * climb down someone's throat * climb up * climb the ladder * climb the walls * climber * declimb * have a mountain to climb * unclimbed
    Synonyms
    (get to the top of) * scale

    Noun

    (wikipedia climb) (en noun)
  • An act of climbing.
  • * 2007 , Nigel Shepherd, Complete Guide to Rope Techniques
    • Make sure that you keep checking to see that everything remains safe throughout the climb .
  • The act of getting to somewhere more elevated.
  • * 2012 , July 15. Richard Williams in Guardian Unlimited, Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot force Bradley Wiggins off track
    • The Mur de Péguère is a savage little climb , its last four kilometres a narrow tunnel of trees and excited spectators urging on the straining riders.
  • * 1999 , B. Keith Jones, The Roomie Do Me Blues
    • I guess the room wasn't so bad, except for the climb to get there. The stairs were destined to be a serious health hazard.
  • An upwards struggle
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=1998 , date=September 30 , author=AP , title=Worst May Lie Ahead For Asia, Report Warns , work=Milwaukee Journal Sentinel citation , page= , passage=After a decade of prosperity, millions of Asians are likely to be pushed into poverty, and the climb out of poverty will stall for millions of others}}

    Derived terms

    * rate of climb

    scale

    English

    (wikipedia scale) {, style="float: right; clear:right;" , , }

    Etymology 1

    From (etyl) ; see scan, ascend, descend, etc.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) A ladder; a series of steps; a means of ascending.
  • An ordered numerical sequence used for measurement.
    • Please rate your experience on a scale from 1 to 10.
  • Size; scope.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01
    • , author=Robert L. Dorit , title=Rereading Darwin , volume=100, issue=1, page=23 , magazine= citation , passage=We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.}}
    The Holocaust was insanity on an enormous scale .
    There are some who question the scale of our ambitions.
  • The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance.
    • This map uses a scale of 1:10.
  • A line or bar associated with a drawing, used to indicate measurement when the image has been magnified or reduced
  • *
    • Even though precision can be carried to an extreme, the scales which now are drawn in (and usually connected to an appropriate figure by an arrow) will allow derivation of meaningful measurements.
  • A means of assigning a magnitude.
    • The magnitude of an earthquake is measured on the open-ended Richter scale .
  • (music) A series of notes spanning an octave, tritave, or pseudo-octave, used to make melodies.
  • A mathematical base for a numeral system.
    • the decimal scale'''; the binary '''scale
  • Gradation; succession of ascending and descending steps and degrees; progressive series; scheme of comparative rank or order.
  • * Milton
    • There is a certain scale of duties which for want of studying in right order, all the world is in confusion.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2012
    • , date=May 13 , author=Phil McNulty , title=Man City 3-2 QPR , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=City's players and supporters travelled from one end of the emotional scale to the other in those vital seconds, providing a truly remarkable piece of football theatre and the most dramatic conclusion to a season in Premier League history.}}
    Derived terms
    * Celsius scale * Fahrenheit scale * Kelvin scale * major scale * microscale * milliscale * minor scale * modal scale * scale invariance * scale model * Richter scale * to scale * wage scale * widescale
    Hyponyms
    * (music) tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, leading note, octave interval * (geography) cartographic ratio, resolution, grain, support, focus, extent, range, size
    See also
    * degree * ordinal variable

    Verb

    (scal)
  • 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.
  • To climb to the top of.
    • Hilary and Norgay were the first known to have scaled Everest.
  • * 1918 , (Edgar Rice Burroughs), Chapter IX
    • At last I came to the great barrier-cliffs; and after three days of mad effort--of maniacal effort--I scaled' them. I built crude ladders; I wedged sticks in narrow fissures; I chopped toe-holds and finger-holds with my long knife; but at last I ' scaled them. Near the summit I came upon a huge cavern.
  • (computing) To tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors.
    • That architecture won't scale to real-world environments.
  • To weigh, measure or grade according to a scale or system.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Scaling his present bearing with his past.
    Related terms
    * scale back * scale down * scale up * scaling ladder

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl) scale, from (etyl) escale, from (etyl) or another (etyl) source skala /, (etyl) scaglia.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • 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.
  • * Milton
    • Fish that, with their fins and shining scales , / Glide under the green wave.
  • 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.
  • A pine nut of a pinecone.
  • The flaky material sloughed off heated metal.
  • Scale mail (as opposed to chain mail).
  • Limescale
  • A scale insect
  • The thin metallic side plate of the handle of a pocketknife.
    • Derived terms
    * antiscalant

    Verb

    (scal)
  • To remove the scales of.
    • Please scale that fish for dinner.
  • To become scaly; to produce or develop scales.
    • The dry weather is making my skin scale .
  • To strip or clear of scale; to descale.
    • to scale the inside of a boiler
  • To take off in thin layers or scales, as tartar from the teeth; to pare off, as a surface.
  • * T. Burnet
    • if all the mountains were scaled , and the earth made even
  • To separate and come off in thin layers or laminae.
    • Some sandstone scales by exposure.
  • * Francis Bacon
    • Those that cast their shell are the lobster and crab; the old skins are found, but the old shells never; so it is likely that they scale off.
  • (UK, Scotland, dialect) To scatter; to spread.
  • To clean, as the inside of a cannon, by the explosion of a small quantity of powder.
    • (Totten)

    Etymology 3

    From (etyl) . Cognate with , as in Etymology 2.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A device to measure mass or weight.
    • After the long, lazy winter I was afraid to get on the scale .
  • Either of the pans, trays, or dishes of a balance or scales.
    • Usage notes
    * The noun is often used in the plural to denote a single device (originally a pair of scales had two pans).

    External links

    (scale up) * *

    Anagrams

    * English terms with multiple etymologies ----