# degree

Pronunciation: say "di-GREE" /dɪˈɡɹiː/

## Noun

1. An award bestowed by a university or college to certify academic achievement; in the United States it can also include secondary-school credentials.
   - Simple: An award you get from a college or university after finishing your studies.
   - _After four years of study, she received a degree in mechanical engineering._
   - _Many employers now require a degree for entry-level positions._
2. The amount to which an entity possesses a given property; relative intensity or extent.
   - Simple: How much of something there is, or the level of a quality.
   - _The two designs share a surprising degree of similarity._
   - _His success depended to a large degree on careful planning._
3. A unit for measuring temperature on scales such as Celsius or Fahrenheit.
   - Simple: A unit used to measure how hot or cold something is.
   - _The thermostat reads a single degree above freezing._
   - _Overnight the temperature fell several degrees below zero._
4. A unit for measuring angles, equal to one 360th of a full circle, also used to give latitude and longitude.
   - Simple: A unit for measuring angles, and for giving the position of places on the earth. A full circle has 360.
   - _The triangle's interior angles sum to one hundred eighty degrees._
   - _A shift of even one degree alters the satellite's trajectory._
5. One of the numbered grades (first, second, third and so on) used to rank how serious a crime, burn or injury is.
   - Simple: How serious a crime, burn or injury is, named by number: first, second, third and so on.
   - _He pleaded guilty to assault in the third degree and was sentenced to probation._
   - _Paramedics treated two firefighters for second-degree burns at the scene._
6. One of the successive stages a process passes through, or one level on a scale of values.
   - Simple: One step or stage in a process or scale.
   - _She gained confidence by slow degrees as the weeks passed._
   - _The change came so gradually, degree by degree, that hardly anyone noticed the neighborhood emptying out._
8. A level of rank or privilege; one's social standing within a hierarchical order. *(literary)*
   - Simple: A person's rank or place in society.
   - _Guests were seated according to their degree at the royal table._
   - _In the medieval romance, a noblewoman gives up her lands to marry a knight of humble degree._
9. A step in genealogical descent, used to measure how closely two relatives are connected.
   - Simple: A step in a family tree that shows how closely people are related.
   - _A parent and child are separated by a single degree of descent._
   - _The lawyers counted the degrees of kinship to settle the inheritance._
10. Any of the forms (positive, comparative, superlative) used in comparing an adjective or adverb.
   - Simple: One of the forms an adjective or adverb takes to compare things, like 'big', 'bigger', and 'biggest'.
   - _The superlative degree expresses the highest level of a quality._
   - _Many languages mark the comparative degree with a special suffix._
11. The sum of the exponents of a term, or the highest such sum among a polynomial's terms.
   - Simple: The highest power in a math expression, like the 2 in x². For terms with several letters, add their powers.
   - _A polynomial of degree four can have up to four roots._
   - _Multiplying two terms adds their degrees together._
7. The place a note holds in a musical scale, numbered upward from the tonic, which is the scale's first and principal note.
   - Simple: The place of a note in a music scale, counted up from the first and most important note.
   - _The leading tone sits on the seventh degree and pulls strongly back toward the tonic._
   - _Melodies in this folk tradition often skip the fourth and seventh degrees of the scale._

## Noun

12. One's relative state or experience; one's way or manner of being. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: Someone's state, condition, or way of being.

## Other meanings

- (noun) The number of edges that meet at a vertex in a graph; its valency.
- (noun) A measure of an arc's curvature, expressed as the angle subtended by a fixed length of arc or chord.
- (noun) The dimensionality of a field extension, taken as a vector space over the base field.
- (noun) The number of logical connectives that appear in a formula.
- (noun) A step on a staircase, or the rung of a ladder.

## Origin

Latin "gradus," with the prefix "de-" added, is the source of Old French "degré," which Middle English borrowed as "degre."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/degree (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).