What does significance mean?
Significance means the importance, relevance, or meaning of something. It is commonly used when discussing a decision, event, discovery, or result in order to identify what makes it important or what consequences it may have. The word can also refer to the interpretation a person or community assigns to an event: a historical development, for example, acquires significance through its impact and the way people understand it. In academic and statistical writing, significance has a more technical sense, referring to whether a result is unlikely to have arisen by chance or whether it supports a meaningful conclusion. Because significance often suggests importance that may not be immediately obvious, it is especially useful when describing the wider relevance of a detail, pattern, or change.
nounThe importance, significance, or relevance of something. In specialized contexts, it can also refer to the meaning or implications of a result, event, or piece of evidence.
- Importance, relevance, or the extent to which something matters.
- The meaning, significance, or implications attached to something, especially in an academic, legal, or analytical context.
"The discovery was of enormous significance for the history of the region."
"The policy has particular significance for low-income families."
"Researchers were careful not to overstate the statistical significance of the finding."
Used when referring to the separate meanings, implications, or important features of more than one person, event, or thing.
"The study examined the cultural significances of the festival in different communities."
A thing can be important without being loud, dramatic, or obvious: significance is often the quiet significance of a detail that changes everything.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does significance come from?
The word comes through Latin from the root signum, meaning a sign or mark, and forms related to significare, meaning to mean or signify. English adopted significance through the same Latin and French development that produced words such as significant and signify. Its historical sense of “meaning or interpretation” developed into the modern senses of “importance” and “relevance.”
Related word forms
How significance is actually used
Generally formal or neutral in tone. In academic and statistical contexts, it often means the implications or importance of a finding; in everyday use, it commonly means importance or relevance.