'order of magnitude' definitions:

noun

A degree in a continuum of size or quantity; "it was on the order of a mile"; "an explosion of a low order of magnitude" [syn: order, order of magnitude]

noun

A number assigned to the ratio of two quantities; two quantities are of the same order of magnitude if one is less than 10 times as large as the other; the number of magnitudes that the quantities differ is specified to within a power of 10 [syn: order of magnitude, magnitude]