Definitions

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

  • adjective Celsius.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Consisting of a hundred degrees; graduated into a hundred divisions or equal parts: often placed after the noun which it qualifies, like troy, avoirdupois, etc.
  • Pertaining to the scale which is divided into a hundred degrees: as, a centigrade degree. Its abbreviation is C.: as, 35° C.

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

  • adjective Consisting of a hundred degrees; graduated into a hundred divisions or equal parts.
  • adjective a thermometer having the zero or 0 at the point indicating the freezing state of water, and the distance between that and the point indicating the boiling state of water divided into one hundred degrees. It is called also the Celsius thermometer, from Anders Celsius, the originator of this scale.

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

  • adjective Having 100 divisions between two fixed points.
  • adjective Celsius.
  • noun A centigrade temperature scale having the freezing point of water defined as 0° and its boiling point defined as 100° at standard atmospheric pressure. Now known as the Celsius scale.

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

  • adjective of or relating to a temperature scale on which the freezing point of water is 0 degrees and the boiling point of water is 100 degrees

Etymologies

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

[French : centi-, centi- + grade, degree (from Italian grado, rank, degree, from Latin gradus, step; see ghredh- in Indo-European roots).]

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Examples

  • But I believe the French have, of late, given the preference to what they call the centigrade scale, in which the space between the freezing and the boiling point is divided into 100 degrees.

    Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 In Which the Elements of that Science Are Familiarly Explained and Illustrated by Experiments 1813

  • Months ago, I asked you why you would not post your temperatures alternatively in centigrade as well as fahrenheit out of respect for the fact that your weather site is in a country using that temperature measurement scale and you responded that your readers would find such measurements confusing and incomprehensible and, therefore, you would never do so.

    Renting in Ajijic 2009

  • Months ago, I asked you why you would not post your temperatures alternatively in centigrade as well as fahrenheit out of respect for the fact that your weather site is in a country using that temperature measurement scale and you responded that your readers would find such measurements confusing and incomprehensible and, therefore, you would never do so.

    Renting in Ajijic 2009

  • Months ago, I asked you why you would not post your temperatures alternatively in centigrade as well as fahrenheit out of respect for the fact that your weather site is in a country using that temperature measurement scale and you responded that your readers would find such measurements confusing and incomprehensible and, therefore, you would never do so.

    Renting in Ajijic 2009

  • Months ago, I asked you why you would not post your temperatures alternatively in centigrade as well as fahrenheit out of respect for the fact that your weather site is in a country using that temperature measurement scale and you responded that your readers would find such measurements confusing and incomprehensible and, therefore, you would never do so.

    Renting in Ajijic 2009

  • Months ago, I asked you why you would not post your temperatures alternatively in centigrade as well as fahrenheit out of respect for the fact that your weather site is in a country using that temperature measurement scale and you responded that your readers would find such measurements confusing and incomprehensible and, therefore, you would never do so.

    Renting in Ajijic 2009

  • Months ago, I asked you why you would not post your temperatures alternatively in centigrade as well as fahrenheit out of respect for the fact that your weather site is in a country using that temperature measurement scale and you responded that your readers would find such measurements confusing and incomprehensible and, therefore, you would never do so.

    Renting in Ajijic 2009

  • Months ago, I asked you why you would not post your temperatures alternatively in centigrade as well as fahrenheit out of respect for the fact that your weather site is in a country using that temperature measurement scale and you responded that your readers would find such measurements confusing and incomprehensible and, therefore, you would never do so.

    Renting in Ajijic 2009

  • Months ago, I asked you why you would not post your temperatures alternatively in centigrade as well as fahrenheit out of respect for the fact that your weather site is in a country using that temperature measurement scale and you responded that your readers would find such measurements confusing and incomprehensible and, therefore, you would never do so.

    Renting in Ajijic 2009

  • Months ago, I asked you why you would not post your temperatures alternatively in centigrade as well as fahrenheit out of respect for the fact that your weather site is in a country using that temperature measurement scale and you responded that your readers would find such measurements confusing and incomprehensible and, therefore, you would never do so.

    Renting in Ajijic 2009

Comments

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  • Officially obsolete since 1948, when the CGPM (governing conference of the metric system) renamed the degree centigrade as the degree Celsius.

    September 4, 2008