An ordered, usually numerical sequence used for measurement, means of assigning a magnitude.
“Please rate your experience on a scale from 1 to 10.”
The ratio of depicted distance to actual distance.
“This map uses a scale of 1:10.”
verb
To change the size of something whilst maintaining proportion; especially to change a process in order to produce much larger amounts of the final product.
“We should scale that up by a factor of 10.”
To tolerate significant increases in throughput or other potentially limiting factors.
“That architecture won't scale to real-world environments.”