Definitions

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

  • noun An amount, as of goods, services, or money, considered to be a fair and suitable equivalent for something else; a fair price or return.
  • noun Monetary or material worth.
  • noun Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit.
  • noun A principle or standard, as of behavior, that is considered important or desirable.
  • noun Precise meaning or import, as of a word.
  • noun Mathematics A quantity or number expressed by an algebraic term.
  • noun Music The relative duration of a tone or rest.
  • noun The relative darkness or lightness of a color.
  • noun Linguistics The sound quality of a letter or diphthong.
  • noun One of a series of specified values.
  • transitive verb To determine or estimate the worth or value of; appraise.
  • transitive verb To regard highly; esteem: synonym: appreciate.
  • transitive verb To rate according to relative estimate of worth or desirability; evaluate.
  • transitive verb To assign a value to (a unit of currency, for example).
  • adjective Of or relating to the practice of investing in individual securities that, according to some fundamental measure, such as book value, appear to be relatively less expensive than comparable securities.
  • adjective Relating to or consisting of principles or standards.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Worth; the property or properties of a thing in virtue of which it is useful or estimable, or the degree in which such a character is possessed; utility; importance; excellence: applied to both persons and things.
  • noun Estimated or attributed worth; appreciation; valuation; esteem; regard.
  • noun The amount of other commodities (commonly represented by money) for which a thing can be exchanged in open market: the ratio in which one thing exchanges against others; the command which one commodity has over others in traffic; in a restricted (and the common popular) sense, the amount of money for which a thing can be sold; price.
  • noun Price equal to the intrinsic worth of a thing; real equivalent.
  • noun Import; precise signification: as, the value of a word or phrase.
  • noun In music, the relative length or duration of a tone signified by a note: as, a half-note has the value of two quarternotes, or four sixteenth-notes; to give a note its full value.
  • noun In painting and the allied arts, relation of one object, part, or atmospheric plane of a picture to the others, with reference to light and shade, the idea of hue being abstracted.
  • noun In mathematics, the special determination of a quantity.
  • noun In biology, grade or rank in classification; valence: as, a group having the value of a family.
  • See cruise, 2.
  • noun Value which is socially recognized, in contrast with purely personal valuation. Thus an heirloom may be said to be of small intrinsic value, although highly valued by its possessor.
  • noun Value as determined by ordinary market conditions, as contrasted with value with which an object is endowed by virtue of convention or governmental flat. Thus paper money is often said to be devoid of intrinsic value.
  • noun In mathematics, the value of the function represented by the ordinate of a turning point.
  • To estimate the value or worth of; specifically, to rate at a certain price; appraise: as, to value lands or goods.
  • To consider with respect to value, worth, or importance; rate, whether high or low; regard.
  • Specifically, to rate high; have in high esteem; set much by; prize; appreciate; regard; hold in respect or estimation; reflexively, to pride (one's self).
  • To reckon or estimate with respect to number or power; compute; compare (with another person or thing) with respect to price or excellence.
  • To take account of; take into account; hence, to care for; consider as important.
  • To raise to estimation; cause to have value, either real or apparent.
  • To give out or represent as wealthy, or financially sound.
  • To be worth; be equal in worth to; be an equivalent of.

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

  • noun The property or aggregate properties of a thing by which it is rendered useful or desirable, or the degree of such property or sum of properties; worth; excellence; utility; importance.
  • noun (Trade & Polit. Econ.) Worth estimated by any standard of purchasing power, especially by the market price, or the amount of money agreed upon as an equivalent to the utility and cost of anything.
  • noun Precise signification; import
  • noun Esteem; regard.
  • noun (Mus.) The relative length or duration of a tone or note, answering to quantity in prosody; thus, a quarter note [�] has the value of two eighth notes [�].
  • noun In an artistical composition, the character of any one part in its relation to other parts and to the whole; -- often used in the plural.
  • noun obsolete Valor.
  • noun That property of a color by which it is distinguished as bright or dark; luminosity.
  • noun Degree of lightness as conditioned by the presence of white or pale color, or their opposites.
  • noun (Math.) Any particular quantitative determination.
  • noun The valuable ingredients to be obtained by treatment from any mass or compound; specif., the precious metals contained in rock, gravel, or the like.
  • noun a phrase usually employed in a bill of exchange or a promissory note, to denote that a consideration has been given for it.

Etymologies

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

[Middle English, from Old French, from feminine past participle of valoir, to be strong, be worth, from Latin valēre; see wal- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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

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Examples

  • In the 3200 data set the value for days that are flagged in other data sets are then estimated against the other stations and entered in as “original value” in 3200.

    A Second Look at USHCN Classification « Climate Audit 2007

  • But intrinsic value is not merely non-instrumental value; for it is also to be distinguished from what Moore calls the ˜value as a part™ of a situation, namely the extra contribution which the situation makes to the value of a complex situation of which it is a ˜part™, over and above its intrinsic value.

    George Edward Moore Baldwin, Tom 2004

  • In him this may possibly arise from no unusual liberality of mind; it may spring from a selfish desire to see the principles he has established or made his own carried out to their legitimate extent, and their value established and acknowledged -- _for it is the application of a principle that imparts to it its highest value_.

    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 330, April 1843 Various

  • That is to say, the manurial value of food consumed during the last year is _only one-half its theoretical value_.

    Manures and the principles of manuring Charles Morton Aikman

  • Not a portion of the value, but the _whole value_, is resolvable into net income and revenue maintaining British families, and creating and sustaining

    The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) With Notices of Earlier Irish Famines John O'Rourke

  • Real Estate& Negroes should be held by all, who are not compelled by debts to sell, because when peace comes they will have some value, though perhaps a low one, while tis certain that the present paper will have a low value& perhaps none at all, as has already happened twice in France and once in the United States.

    Elliott and Gonzales Family Papers. Personal Correspondence, 1861-1865. Elliott 1865

  • We do not exchange a bale of cotton for a bale of lace collars, nor a pound of wool in the grease for a pound of wool in cashmere; but a certain value of one of these things _for an equal value_ of the other.

    What Is Free Trade? An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Éconimiques" Designed for the American Reader Fr��d��ric Bastiat 1825

  • From this gross _Diallælos_ (as the logicians call it), or see-saw, we are now liberated; for the first step, as we are now aware, is false: the value of commodities is _not_ determined by wages; since wages express the value of labor; and it has been demonstrated that not the _value_ but the _quantity_ of labor determines the value of its products.

    Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 2 Thomas De Quincey 1822

  • In this passage, over and above the radical error about real value, there is also apparent that confusion, which has misled so many writers, between _value_ and _wealth_; a confusion which Mr. Ricardo first detected and cleared up.

    Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 2 Thomas De Quincey 1822

  • You know, Phædrus, or you soon will know, that I differ from X. altogether on the choice between the two laws: he contends that the value of all things is determined by the _quantity_ of the producing labor; I, on the other hand, contend that the value of all things is determined by the _value_ of the producing labor.

    Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 2 Thomas De Quincey 1822

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