norm

norm authoritative rule or standard by which something is judged and on that basis approved or disapproved. Examples of norms include standards of right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, and truth and falsehood. Several fields of philosophy, especially ethics , aesthetics , and logic , evaluate such rules; in sociology, social and institutional norms, more communal and less formal than laws, are studied in relation to conformity, and to anomie or normlessness. See also Émile Durkheim .

NORM. A STANDARD, model, or average, often used of social behaviour and consensus in the use of a language: deviations from the norm; linguistic norms. See DEVIANT, NORMATIVE, REFERENCE NORM, REGULAR, RULE.

norm / nôrm/ • n. 1. (the norm) something that is usual, typical, or standard: this system has been the norm in Germany for decades. ∎  (usu. norms) a standard or pattern, esp. of social behavior, that is typical or expected of a group: the norms of good behavior in the civil service. ∎  a required standard; a level to be complied with or reached: the 7% pay norm had been breached again. 2. Math. the product of a complex number and its conjugate, equal to the sum of the squares of its real and imaginary components, or the positive square root of this sum. ∎  an analogous quantity used to represent the magnitude of a vector.