sliding scale
- a variable scale, especially of industrial costs, as wages, that may be adapted to changes in demand.
- a wage scale varying with the selling price of goods produced, the cost of living, or profits.
- a price scale, as of medical fees, in which prices vary according to the ability of individuals to pay.
- a tariff scale varying according to changing prices.
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Origin of sliding scale
First recorded in 1700–10
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for sliding scale
Historical Examples
For let not the reader forget, that on the system of a sliding-scale, this action cannot be otherwise than moderate.
The sliding-scale of expenditure always went up and down to suit the times.
It was the precise object of the sliding-scale to admit grain, in periods of scarcity, free of all duty.
Men and brothers, on your Sliding-scale you seem sliding, and to have slid,—you little know whither!
Past and PresentThomas Carlyle
The sliding-scale (vernier) divides the tenths into ten parts each, or hundredths of an inch.
Barometer and Weather GuideRobert Fitzroy
sliding scale
- a variable scale according to which specified wages, tariffs, prices, etc, fluctuate in response to changes in some other factor, standard, or conditions
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
sliding scale
A set of rates that change according to a mathematical formula. The income tax, for example, is levied on a sliding scale, with the rich paying a higher percentage than the poor.
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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.