English
scalebound
From scale + bound, coined by the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in a 1981 paper.
Proto-Indo-European *skend- ‘to jump up, ascend’
Proto-Indo-European *(s)kn̥d-sleh₂
Proto-Italic *skand-slā
Latin scāla ‘ladder; stairs’
Middle English scale ‘ladder’
English scale
The story
From scale + bound, coined by the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in a 1981 paper.
Today it means
adj Of an object: for which characteristic elements of scale, such as length and width, are few in number and each with a clearly distinct size.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “scalebound”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / scalebound