Other forms: volumes
Volume is how loud a sound is — the thing you turn up when your song comes on and down when the neighbours bang on the wall. The volume buttons on the side of a phone, the volume knob on a car stereo, a teacher asking you to keep the volume down.
Volume also means the amount of space something fills, measured in litres or cubic metres: a physics question about the volume of a cylinder, the volume of water in a tank. In business it means quantity, and a large one — the volume of traffic on the ring road, sales volume, a call centre handling high volumes. A volume is a book, particularly one of a numbered set: volume three of the encyclopedia. Shampoo adverts promise your hair volume, meaning body and lift. And speaks volumes is the fixed phrase for something that tells you a great deal without a word: her silence spoke volumes.
1nounvolumeThe loudness of a sound.~2%
“Turn the volume down, I can hear it through two doors.”
synonyms: loudness
2nouncapacityThe amount of space that something fills or can hold.~16%
“Work out the volume of the box in cubic centimetres.”
synonyms: capacity
3nounquantityThe amount of something, especially a large amount.~8%
“The volume of complaints rose sharply after the price change.”
4nounbookA book, especially one of a set.~72%
“The library has the second volume but not the first.”
5nounthicknessThickness and body in hair.~2%
“This spray is supposed to give fine hair some volume.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 12 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Volume comes from Latin volūmen, a roll or a book, from volvō, to roll or turn about. A volume was a papyrus scroll you unrolled to read. The book kept the name, the size of the roll grew into size in general, and loudness is the newest branch of that same idea: the amount of sound. The same Latin verb turns up in revolve, involve and revolution.
Latin
volūmen — book, roll
Old French
volume
Middle English
volume
English, today
volume
Built from
From Middle English volume, from Old French volume, from Latin volūmen (“book, roll”), from volvō (“roll, turn about”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA