common measure

noun

Updated on: 13 Mar 2018

Definition of common measure

: a meter consisting chiefly of iambic lines of 7 accents each arranged in rhymed pairs usually printed in 4-line stanzas — called also common meter

Recent Examples of common measure from the Web

As high-school GPAs continue to go up because of grade inflation, having the common measure provided by admissions test scores is useful.

— nathan kuncel and, WSJ, "The Truth About the SAT and ACT," 8 Mar. 2018
Residents of Darnestown, Maryland, are most likely to sport similar paychecks, according to Bloomberg’s calculation of the Gini Index—a common measure of income distribution among a population.

— shelly hagan, Bloomberg.com, "America’s 100 Richest Places," 5 Mar. 2018
One common measure of a congressional map is to look at the result of the median congressional district in the average statewide election (here, the five contests in 2016).

— New York Times, "Hundreds of Simulated Maps Show How Well Democrats Fared in Pennsylvania," 26 Feb. 2018
Last year, the World Bank surveyed 154 countries and determined the South Africa had the world’s highest Gini coefficient, a common measure of inequality.

— kevin sieff, Washington Post, "Cape Town is running out of water, and the crisis has highlighted the vast divide between rich and poor," 23 Feb. 2018
Also, the index’s price-to-earnings ratio—a common measure of how expensive stocks are relative to their potential to make money—isn’t far from record highs, a source of investor concern.

— mike bird, WSJ, "Global Earnings Hit a Record High, Giving Market Rally Momentum," 5 Dec. 2017
Explore the Management Top 250 The metrics the Drucker Institute used to assess financial performance include return on assets, return on equity and return on invested capital, common measures of how efficiently a company makes money.

— ezequiel minaya, WSJ, "Which Companies Excel in the Financial Category of the Management Top 250," 5 Dec. 2017
And the Gini index, the most common measure of income inequality, was a record 0.481 in 2016.

— jordan yadoo, Bloomberg.com, "Inequality Persists Despite U.S. Progress on Incomes and Poverty," 13 Sep. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'common measure.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.