accuracy
- 1The state of being correct and free from error; exactness and correctness.
Historians prize the accuracy of firsthand accounts above later retellings.
The translator was admired for her speed and her accuracy.
Similarcorrectness, precision, exactness, exactitude
Oppositeinaccuracy, imprecision
Note
Built plainly from accurate plus the suffix -cy, the noun has been in English since the 1660s. It often pairs with a near-synonym, as in Thomas Reid's "precision and accuracy". It also takes a with-clause naming the act being judged: Dionysius Lardner's "the accuracy with which the piston fits". That construction rates how well something is done, not merely whether it is right.
- 2Exact conformity to truth, or to a rule or model; the degree to which a measurement matches a true or standard value.
Regular calibration improves the accuracy of laboratory instruments.
The survey's accuracy depended on careful measurement of every boundary line.
Similarprecision, exactness, correctness
Oppositeinaccuracy, imprecision
Note
Measurement treats it as a matter of degree: how close a reading comes to the true or accepted value. It is easily confused with precision, which concerns only how closely repeated measurements agree with one another. Readings can cluster tightly yet sit on the wrong value. Unlike the general sense of correctness, this one is graded, so instruments are said to have high or low accuracy.
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Origin
First attested in the 1660s, formed from "accurate" plus the suffix "-cy".