amplitude

/ˌæmpləˈtud/

/ˈæmplɪtud/

Other forms: amplitudes

Amplitude describes something there is a lot of, or abundance. If people compliment the amplitude of emotion in your poetry, it means you put much emotion into what you write.

The noun amplitude describes the depth, breadth, or magnitude of something — in other words, how big or full it is. It comes from the Latin amplus, "large, spacious." You can admire the amplitude of your favorite teacher's intelligence or try to guess the amplitude of a snow storm. In physics, amplitude is a change in oscillation or vibration, and in math it's the angle made with the positive horizontal axis by the vector representation of a complex number.

Definitions of amplitude

1. noun

   greatness of magnitude
   types:

   signal level

   the amplitude level of the desired signal

   background level, noise level

   the amplitude level of the undesired background noise

   type of:

   magnitude

   the property of relative size or extent (whether large or small)
2. noun

   (physics) the maximum displacement of a periodic wave
   type of:

   displacement, shift

   an event in which something is displaced without rotation
3. noun

   the property of copious abundance
   synonyms: bountifulness, bounty

   type of:

   abundance, copiousness, teemingness

   the property of a more than adequate quantity or supply