Adjacent Words

Significance definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

SIGNIF'ICANCE, SIGNIF'ICANCY, n. [L. significans. See Signify.]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: the quality of being significant; "do not underestimate the significance of nuclear power" [ant: insignificance]
2: a meaning that is not expressly stated but can be inferred; "the significance of his remark became clear only later"; "the expectation was spread both by word and by implication" [syn: significance, import, implication]
3: the message that is intended or expressed or signified; "what is the meaning of this sentence"; "the significance of a red traffic light"; "the signification of Chinese characters"; "the import of his announcement was ambiguous" [syn: meaning, significance, signification, import]

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: 13th century 1. a. something that is conveyed as a meaning often obscurely or indirectly b. the quality of conveying or implying 2. a. the quality of being important ; moment b. the quality of being statistically significant Synonyms: see importance

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 importance; noteworthiness (his opinion is of no significance). 2 a concealed or real meaning (what is the significance of his statement?). 3 the state of being significant. 4 Statistics the extent to which a result deviates from a hypothesis such that the difference is due to more than errors in sampling. Etymology: OF significance or L significantia (as SIGNIFY)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Significance Sig*nif"i*cance, Significancy Sig*nif"i*can*cy, n. [L. significantia.] 1. The quality or state of being significant. 2. That which is signified; meaning; import; as, the significance of a nod, of a motion of the hand, or of a word or expression. 3. Importance; moment; weight; consequence. With this brain I must work, in order to give significancy and value to the few facts which I possess. --De Quincey.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

The significance of something is the importance that it has, usually because it will have an effect on a situation or shows something about a situation. Ideas about the social significance of religion have changed over time... = importance N-UNCOUNT: usu with supp, oft N prep

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n.; (also significancy) 1. Meaning, import, purport, sense. 2. Importance, consequence, weight, moment. 3. Expressiveness, impressiveness, force, energy.

Moby Thesaurus

accent, acceptation, affective meaning, authority, balefulness, banefulness, bearing, bodefulness, coloring, concern, concernment, connotation, consequence, consequentiality, consideration, conspicuousness, content, credit, denotation, direness, distinction, doomfulness, drift, effect, elevation, eminence, emphasis, essence, exaltation, excellence, expressiveness, extension, fatality, fatefulness, force, gist, grammatical meaning, grandeur, greatness, high mightiness, high order, high rank, idea, impact, implication, import, importance, impression, influence, intelligibility, intendment, intension, interest, interpretability, lexical meaning, literal meaning, loftiness, magnitude, mark, materiality, meaning, meaningfulness, meatiness, merit, message, moment, momentousness, nobility, notability, note, ominousness, outstandingness, overtone, paramountcy, perfection, pertinence, pith, pithiness, point, portent, portentousness, practical consequence, precedence, preeminence, pregnancy, presagefulness, prestige, primacy, priority, prominence, purport, range of meaning, readability, real meaning, reference, referent, relation, relevance, scope, self-importance, semantic cluster, semantic field, sense, sententiousness, significancy, significantness, signification, significatum, signifie, sinisterness, span of meaning, spirit, stress, structural meaning, sublimity, substance, suggestiveness, sum, sum and substance, supereminence, superiority, supremacy, symbolic meaning, tenor, totality of associations, transferred meaning, unadorned meaning, understanding, undertone, value, vein, virtue, weight, weightiness, worth