magnitude vs order of magnitude

magnitude

noun
  • An order of magnitude. 

  • A measure of the energy released by an earthquake (e.g. on the Richter scale). 

  • A number, assigned to something, such that it may be compared to others numerically 

  • The absolute or relative size, extent or importance of something. 

  • Of a vector, the norm, most commonly, the two-norm. 

  • The apparent brightness of a star, with lower magnitudes being brighter; apparent magnitude 

  • A ratio of intensity expressed as a logarithm. 

order of magnitude

noun
  • The class of scale or magnitude of any amount, where each class contains values of a fixed ratio (most often 10) to the class preceding it. For example, something that is 2 orders of magnitude larger is 100 times larger, something that is 3 orders of magnitude larger is 1000 times larger, and something that is 6 orders of magnitude larger is a million times larger, because 10² = 100, 10³ = 1000, and 10⁶ = a million. 

How often have the words magnitude and order of magnitude occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )