Other forms: gradients
A gradient is a smooth change from one colour into another with no line where they meet. A sky going from orange at the horizon to deep blue overhead; the soft wash of colour behind a button on a website.
The older sense is steepness — how sharply a road, a railway or a hill rises and falls. It is written as a ratio or a percentage: a gradient of 1 in 10, a 12% gradient that has cyclists out of the saddle. Railway engineers care about it more than anyone, because a heavy train can barely climb. In maths the gradient of a line is its slope, rise divided by run, and in science a gradient is a steady change in a quantity across space: a temperature gradient, a pressure gradient. American English says grade for the road sense.
1noungradientA gradual change from one colour into another, with no hard edge between them.~2%
“The poster fades through a gradient from pink to gold.”
2nounrailThe steepness of a slope: how sharply a road, railway or hill rises or falls.~2%
“The train slowed to a crawl on the steep gradient.”
3nounlineThe slope of a line on a graph, found by dividing the rise by the run.~29%
“The gradient of this line is two.”
4nounsteadyA steady change in a measured quantity across a distance.~67%
“Heat always moves down a temperature gradient.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Gradient comes from Latin gradiens, the present participle of gradior, to step or to walk. So a gradient is a going, a thing taken in steps. Whether it is a hill, a line on a graph or a colour easing into another, the word is about moving by degrees rather than jumping.
Latin
gradiēns
English, today
gradient
Built from
From Latin gradiēns, present participle of gradior (“to step, to walk”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA