The word "gradient" is correct and usable in written English.
It is a noun that refers to a gentle slope or gradual degree of change. Example sentence: The gradient of the hill made it an ideal place for sledding in the winter.
Now it's as though only designs featuring the liberal application of gradient, southern cross stars and random colour splotches get a gig.
How Start with the ombré painting technique for a gradient colour effect.
It's not so much Holme Moss's gradient but its brutal exposure to the elements which makes it so tough.
The women get a look-in on Saturday, when riders including Olympic and Paralympic stars Dame Sarah Storey and Joanna Rowsell will contest a 20km circuit around York. Friday's stage is arguably the toughest, taking in the lung-busting 1.5km climb out of Robin Hood's Bay – Côte de Robin Hood's Bay to you – which has significant sections at a 25% gradient, as well as a few other zingers.
But the daft 33% gradient is going to push the riders to their limit: it's the steepest climb of any section on the whole Tour de France route, according to Sheffield council.
Limber Hill, which rises out of the village of Glaisdale in the North York Moors, is too short to warrant official status as a climb under rules from the UCI, cycling's international governing body, but will test the peloton with a gradient of 33%.
This encouraged Swiss entrepreneurs to construct not only hotels and huts but ever more ambitious rail lines; indeed, it seemed no gradient could not be conquered by rack-and-pinion or narrow gauge.
Now the four summits on the Sheffield stretch of Stage 2 are being permanently marked with special signs, complete with altitude, summit and gradient.
So, like my brother, father, grandfathers and great-grandfathers before me, down I went; down 1,200 metres at a one-in-three gradiron in iron bogies to a black labyrinth of tunnels where I would stay, with a throat full of coaldust, for 10 years, nine months and 24 days.
Related: Global warming slowdown probably due to natural cycles, study finds In the coming years the world is expected to move out of a period in which the gradient of warming has not slowed even though the temperature has been moderated.
And the fields produced by gradient coils in a conventional MRI machine are not strong enough to pull on particles below about 250 micrometres in size, says Dr Martel, though an upgraded MRI system with more powerful coils could propel beads as small as 50 micrometres, he adds.
