degree
noun
Simple meaning
A unit of measurement, or an award given by a university
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dihgreeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
dɪɡˈɹi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
physics
A unit of temperature on a specified scale
“The game was played in spite of the 40-degree temperature.”
education
An award conferred by a college or university signifying that the recipient has satisfactorily completed a course of study
“He earned his degree at Princeton summa cum laude.”
physics
A unit of measurement of temperature on any of several scales, such as Celsius or Fahrenheit.
education
A stage of proficiency or qualification in a course of study, now especially an award bestowed by a university/college, as a certification of academic achievement. (In the United States, can include secondary schools.)
geometry
A unit of measurement of angle equal to ¹⁄₃₆₀ of a circle's circumference.
An individual step, or stage, in any process or scale of values.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Varies by meaning
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A unit of temperature on a specified scale
Used this way, degree is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a scientific use: it names something precisely within a field of study, so it appears in research and teaching more than in conversation.
“The game was played in spite of the 40-degree temperature.”
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Academic writing
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
How It’s Used
The word’s distinct uses, one example each.
Unitnoun
“The game was played in spite of the 40-degree temperature.”
Award / stagenoun
“He earned his degree at Princeton summa cum laude.”
More ways to use degree
- “He earned his degree at Princeton summa cum laude.”noun
- “The game was played in spite of the 40-degree temperature.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A degree on the centigrade scale of temperature.
The day on which university degrees are conferred.
A degree on the Fahrenheit scale of temperature.
The degree of the term in the polynomial that has the highest degree.
The sum of the exponents of the variables in the term.
An unrestricted variable in a frequency distribution.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: unit of temperature on a specified scale
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.