calibrate
Formscalibrates, calibrating, calibrated
- 1To check or adjust something by comparing it with a standard.
Technicians calibrate each thermometer against a reference instrument before it leaves the factory.
The pitcher spent the first inning calibrating his fastball to the umpire's strike zone.
Note
Engineers draw a line the everyday word blurs: strictly, calibration compares an instrument's readings with a reference of known value and records the difference, while correcting the instrument is a separate step called adjustment. The verb also stretches to people fine-tuning a skill, as when David Hytner, writing on England's footballers in 2024, has Trent Alexander-Arnold "calibrating his passing range".
- 2To put the scale markings on a measuring instrument.
The dial is calibrated from zero to one hundred in steps of five.
Instrument makers once had to calibrate each thermometer by hand, scratching the degree marks into the glass.
Similargraduate
Note
Scale-making starts from a few fixed points, such as the freezing and boiling points of water on a thermometer, and divides the space between them into graduations. The verb is usually passive here, with in naming the unit and from and to giving the range: a dial calibrated in degrees, a gauge calibrated from zero to one hundred.
- 3To measure the caliber of a gun or a tube.
Before the museum could identify the cannon, an expert had to calibrate its bore.
The armorer calibrated the captured musket and found its bore was wider than any the army used.
Note
This is the job closest to the word's origin, since calibrate was formed from caliber plus -ate. Caliber is the inside diameter of a bore, the width that decides what ammunition a gun can take, so to calibrate a barrel is to gauge that width with a plug gauge or calipers, in fractions of an inch or in millimeters.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from caliber (or calibre) + -ate.