Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A logarithmic scale used to express the amount of energy released by an earthquake. Its values typically fall between 0 and 9, with each increase of 1 representing a 10-fold increase in energy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun seismology a logarithmic scale used to express the energy released by an earthquake, each increase of 1 representing a 32-fold increase in energy.
  • noun A value on the Richter scale

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a logarithmic scale of 1 to 10 formerly used to express the magnitude of an earthquake on the basis of the size of seismograph oscillations

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After Charles Francis Richter, (1900–1985), American seismologist.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From American seismologist Charles Richter.

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