Standard

From Freepedia

The word standard has several meanings:

Originally, standard referred to a conspicuous object used as a rallying point in battle. The term is probably from Frankish *standhart "steadfast" (literally, "stand hard"). In the High Middle Ages, a standard was a tapering flag or ensign flown by lower ranking knights, as opposed to the square banners flown by knights banneret;

The modern primary meaning evolved through symbolism: "a quality or measure which is established by authority, custom, or general consent". In the phrase "light standard" it retains the older meaning of a vertical support.

In technical use, a standard is a concrete example of an item or a specification against which all others may be measured. In this meaning, the word related to Old French estendre "extend", and is attested in the meaning "unit of measure" in Anglo-French from 1327. For example, there are "primary standards" for length, mass (see Kilogram standard), and other units of measure, kept by laboratories and standards organizations. Officially certified measuring instruments must be checked for accuracy using such standards (or secondary standards made from the primary). See examples in chemistry below. Other technical standards define a set of properties that a product or service should have. There are "voluntary" standards to which the producers adhere voluntarily. Such standards are laid down by an organization gathering representatives of producers and users of the type of product or service. There are also "mandatory" or "regulatory" standards with which products and services have to comply by Law i.e. imposed by a regulator, their genesis is however similar to the voluntary ones. A "de facto" standard rather is a set of properties of an outstanding member of a product category, which the user community requires without that they have been laid down formally by a producer/user organization.

In analytical chemistry a standard is a preparation containing a known concentration of a specified substance. A simple standard may be a dilute solution of the substance; this serves as a reference to calibrate equipment used to measure a sample's composition in terms of compounds or elements. For accuracy, real samples are bracketed by known standards, that is, standards are analyzed that contain concentrations of the analyte that are less than and greater than the real sample's concentration.

There are also certified reference materials available which contain independently verified concentrations of elements available in different matrices (a matrix is bulk material of the sample, for example blood).

Some of the succesors to the Standard Oil Trust formerly used Standard as a brand name. These included Amoco in the Midwest United States before their merger with BP, Chevron, Exxon, and Sohio.

The Standard Motor Company made cars in England from 1903 to 1963.

The Standard type battleship was a series of US Navy battleships with relatively homogenous handling characteristics including a 21 knot flank speed and a 700 yard tactical diameter at flank speed. There were five classes in the Standard program, plus a sixth which was canceled: Nevada class, Pennsylvania class, New Mexico class, Tennessee class (called in contemporary European publications the California class, as USS California (BB-44) was commissioned first) and Colorado class (called in contemporary European publications the Maryland class for the same reasons as above). The class which was canceled and broken up was the BB-49 South Dakota class.

In linguistics, a standard can refer to either a written standard, an endorsed "proper" way of spelling words or even of constructing sentences, or to a spoken standard or pronunciation standard: an endorsed way of pronouncing the words of a language. In English, which has no legal or international standards, for instance, "The Queen's English" is widely regarded (especially outside the United States) as the "proper" pronuciation. Unofficial spelling standards for English also exist in various countries, especially where the language is dominant. For example, the "American standard" spelling for "harbor" and "defense" is at odds with the "standard" spellings of most other Anglophone countries, where these words are spelled "harbour" and "defence". For other languages, such as French or Spanish, there exist centralized authorities which determine the "proper" pronunciation and spelling of each and every word in the "standard" language (see List of language regulators).

See also

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