• Value

    Pronunciation

    • IPA: /ˈvæl.juː/
    • Rhymes: -æljuː

    Origin

    From the French value, feminine past participle of valoir, from Latin valere ("to be strong, be worth").

    Full definition of value

    Noun

    value

    (plural values)
    1. The quality (positive or negative) that renders something desirable or valuable.
      • 2012, May 13, Alistair Magowan, Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd, United were value for their win and Rooney could have had a hat-trick before half-time, with Paul Scholes also striking the post in the second half.
    2. The Shakespearean Shylock is of dubious value in the modern world.
    3. The degree of importance given to something.
      • 2013-06-07, Gary Younge, Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution, WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, . They also exposed the blatant discrepancy between the west's professed values and actual foreign policies.
    4. The value of my children's happiness is second only to that of my wife.
    5. The amount (of money or goods or services) that is considered to be a fair equivalent for something else.
      • M'CullochAn article may be possessed of the highest degree of utility, or power to minister to our wants and enjoyments, and may be universally made use of, without possessing exchangeable value.
      • DrydenHis design was not to pay him the value of his pictures, because they were above any price.
      • 2013-08-03, Boundary problems, Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.
    6. (music) The relative duration of a musical note.
      The value of a crotchet is twice that of a quaver.
    7. (arts) The relative darkness or lightness of a color in (a specific area of) a painting etc.
      • Joe Hing LoweI establish the colors and principal values by organizing the painting into three values--dark, medium...and light.
    8. Numerical quantity measured or assigned or computed.
      The exact value of pi cannot be represented in decimal notation.
    9. Precise meaning; import.the value of a word; the value of a legal instrument
    10. (obsolete) Esteem; regard.
      • Bishop BurnetMy relation to the person was so near, and my value for him so great.
    11. (obsolete) valour; also spelled valew

    Synonyms

    • (quality that renders something desirable) worth

    Verb

    1. To estimate the value of; judge the worth of something.
      • 2013-08-03, Boundary problems, Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too....But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts as a territory, what counts as output and how to value it. Indeed, economists are still tweaking it.
    2. I will have the family jewels valued by a professional.
    3. To fix or determine the value of; assign a value to, as of jewelry or art work.
    4. To regard highly; think much of; place importance upon.
      Gold was valued highly among the Romans.
    5. To hold dear.
      I value these old photographs.

    Anagrams

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