What does average mean?

What does average mean?. The world's largest and most trusted free online dictionary: definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more.

What does average mean? - The Free Dictionary

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[n] a statistic describing the location of a distribution(it set the norm for American homes)[v] amount to or come to an average, without loss or gain(The number of hours I work per work averages out to 40)[a] approximating the statistical norm or average or expected value(the average inco

average

average - The Free Dictionary

[n] a statistic describing the location of a distribution
(it set the norm for American homes)

[v] amount to or come to an average, without loss or gain
(The number of hours I work per work averages out to 40)

[a] approximating the statistical norm or average or expected value
(the average income in New England is below that of the nation of average height for his age the mean annual rainfall)

[n] (sports) the ratio of successful performances to opportunities

[v] achieve or reach on average
(He averaged a C)

[a] lacking special distinction, rank, or status; commonly encountered
(average people the ordinary (or common) man in the street)

[n] an intermediate scale value regarded as normal or usual
(he is about average in height the snowfall this month is below average)

[v] compute the average of

[a] lacking exceptional quality or ability
(a novel of average merit only a fair performance of the sonata in fair health the caliber of the students has gone from mediocre to above average the performance was middling at best)

[a] around the middle of a scale of evaluation
(an orange of average size intermediate capacity medium bombers)

[a] relating to or constituting the most frequent value in a distribution
(the modal age at which American novelists reach their peak is 30)

[a] relating to or constituting the middle value of an ordered set of values (or the average of the middle two in a set with an even number of values)
(the median value of 17, 20, and 36 is 20 the median income for the year was $15,000)

Other vocabulary

a, a battery, a bit, a capella singing, a cappella, a cappella singing, a couple of, a few, a fortiori, a good deal, a great deal, a horizon, a hundred times, a kempis, a la carte, a la mode, a level, a little, a lot, a million times, a posteriori, a priori, a trifle, a'man, a-bomb, a-horizon, a-line, a-list, a-ok, a-okay, v, v neck, v sign, v-1, v-8 juice, v-day, v-e day, v-j day, v-shaped, v.p., va, vac, vacancy, vacancy rate, vacant, vacant lot, vacantly, vacate, vacation, vacation home, vacation spot, vacationer, vacationing, vacationist, vaccaria, vaccaria hispanica, vaccaria pyramidata, vaccina, vaccinate, vaccinated

Dictionary

A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.

A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include words in specialist fields, rather than a complete range of words in the language. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are usually called terms instead of words, although there is no consensus whether lexicology and terminology are two different fields of study. In theory, general dictionaries are supposed[citation needed] to be semasiological, mapping word to definition, while specialized dictionaries are supposed to be onomasiological, first identifying concepts and then establishing the terms used to designate them. In practice, the two approaches are used for both types. There are other types of dictionaries that do not fit neatly into the above distinction, for instance bilingual (translation) dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms (thesauri), and rhyming dictionaries. The word dictionary (unqualified) is usually understood to refer to a general purpose monolingual dictionary.

There is also a contrast between prescriptive or descriptive dictionaries; the former reflect what is seen as correct use of the language while the latter reflect recorded actual use. Stylistic indications (e.g. "informal" or "vulgar") in many modern dictionaries are also considered by some to be less than objectively descriptive.

The first recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times around 2300 BCE, in the form of bilingual dictionaries, and the oldest surviving monolingual dictionaries are Chinese dictionaries c. 3rd century BCE. The first purely English alphabetical dictionary was A Table Alphabeticall, written in 1604, and monolingual dictionaries in other languages also began appearing in Europe at around this time. The systematic study of dictionaries as objects of scientific interest arose as a 20th-century enterprise, called lexicography, and largely initiated by Ladislav Zgusta. The birth of the new discipline was not without controversy, with the practical dictionary-makers being sometimes accused by others of having an "astonishing" lack of method and critical-self reflection.