Definitions

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

  • noun A collection of written or printed sheets bound together; a book.
  • noun One of the books of a work printed and bound in more than one book.
  • noun A series of issues of a periodical, usually covering one calendar year.
  • noun A unit of written material assembled together and cataloged in a library.
  • noun A roll of parchment; a scroll.
  • noun The amount of space occupied by a three-dimensional object or region of space, expressed in cubic units.
  • noun The capacity of such a region or of a specified container, expressed in cubic units.
  • noun Amount; quantity.
  • noun A large amount.
  • noun The amplitude or loudness of a sound.
  • noun A control, as on a radio, for adjusting amplitude or loudness.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To swell; rise in bulk or volume.
  • noun A measure of the relative quantity of a substance as determined by its bulk.
  • noun A written document (as of parchment, papyrus, or strips of bark) rolled up in a convenient form for keeping or use, such being anciently the prevailing form of the book; a roll; a scroll. The written sheets were usually wound around a stick, termed an umbilicus, the extremities of which were called the cornua, to which a label containing the name of the author was tied. The whole was placed in a wrapper, and frequently anointed with oil of cedarwood as a preservative against insects.
  • noun Hence2. A collection of written or printed sheets bound together, whether containing a single complete work, a part of a work, or more than one separate work; a book; a tome: as, a large volume; a work in six volumes.
  • noun Something of a roll-like, rounded, or swelling form; a rounded mass; a coil; a convolution; a wreath; a fold: as, volumes of smoke.
  • noun An amount or measure of tridimensional space; solid contents; hence, an amount or aggregated quantity of any kind.
  • noun In music, quantity, fullness, or roundness of tone or sound.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete A roll; a scroll; a written document rolled up for keeping or for use, after the manner of the ancients.
  • noun Hence, a collection of printed sheets bound together, whether containing a single work, or a part of a work, or more than one work; a book; a tome; especially, that part of an extended work which is bound up together in one cover.
  • noun Anything of a rounded or swelling form resembling a roll; a turn; a convolution; a coil.
  • noun Dimensions; compass; space occupied, as measured by cubic units, that is, cubic inches, feet, yards, etc.; mass; bulk.
  • noun (Mus.) Amount, fullness, quantity, or caliber of voice or tone.
  • noun (Chem.) the ratio of the atomic and molecular weights divided respectively by the specific gravity of the substance in question.
  • noun (Physics & Chem.) the quotient obtained by dividing unity by the specific gravity; the reciprocal of the specific gravity. It is equal (when the specific gravity is referred to water at 4° C. as a standard) to the number of cubic centimeters occupied by one gram of the substance.

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

  • noun A unit of three dimensional measure of space that comprises a length, a width and a height. It is measured in units of cubic centimeters in metric, cubic inches or cubic feet in English measurement.
  • noun Strength of sound. Measured in decibels.
  • noun The issues of a periodical over a period of one year.
  • noun A single book of a publication issued in multi-book format, such as an encyclopedia.
  • noun Quantity.
  • noun economics The total supply of money in circulation or, less frequently, total amount of credit extended, within a specified national market or worldwide.
  • noun computing An accessible storage area with a single file system, typically resident on a single partition of a hard disk.

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

  • noun a publication that is one of a set of several similar publications
  • noun physical objects consisting of a number of pages bound together
  • noun the property of something that is great in magnitude
  • noun the amount of 3-dimensional space occupied by an object
  • noun the magnitude of sound (usually in a specified direction)
  • noun a relative amount

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin volūmen, roll of writing, from volvere, to roll; see wel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French volume, from Latin volūmen ("book, roll"), from volvō ("roll, turn about").

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Examples

  • The editor acknowledges that the poem itself, from the unpruned luxuriance of the author's powers, "has remained a sealed volume" -- certainly it _ought_ to be a _sealed volume_ -- "to the fairest portion of the community."

    Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew Edward Berens

  • _Each one volume, cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated by photographs, per volume_ ...

    The Little Colonel's Hero 1897

  • Oh, to be a school-boy again in a long gray coat and ridiculous pink stockings -- innocent and free -- with Esmeralda for my only love, and Athos and Porthos and D'Artagnan for my bosom friends, and no worse tribulation than to be told on a Saturday afternoon that the third volume was in hand -- _volume trois en lecture_ '.

    Peter Ibbetson George Du Maurier 1865

  • It also adds the @volume@ variable for getting the volume name of your drive.

    PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives 2009

  • It's at 5\%, so we'll take$5 * 220 volume = $3300 in negative $volume of bias.

    Latest Articles 2008

  • $5. 5M $volume for McCain + $0. 2M $volume bias à $5. 7M $volume, dividing by current volume

    Latest Articles 2008

  • $6. 7M $volume for Obama - $0. 2M $volume bias à $6. 5M $volume, dividing by current volume

    Latest Articles 2008

  • This kind of relationship between music and visuals or environment becomes, musically at least, increasingly murky on this micro level as a sheer ‘spike’ in volume is no guarantee that a listener would make the corresponding connection to what they are hearing.

    Archive 2008-12-01 Ben Abraham 2008

  • This kind of relationship between music and visuals or environment becomes, musically at least, increasingly murky on this micro level as a sheer ‘spike’ in volume is no guarantee that a listener would make the corresponding connection to what they are hearing.

    Audiosurf - Breakfast of Champions Ben Abraham 2008

  • Far more than a memoir, the volume is an action plan for others facing the same challenges.

    Arthur Rosenfeld: Power Couple, Power Recovery Arthur Rosenfeld 2010

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