A number that states how many of something. In "record 43 has 7 fields," the 7 is the cardinal number. Contrast with "ordinal number," which identifies a sequence such as "record 43." See cardinality.

UNLIKE Hudibras, who could, as we are told, “extract numbers out of matter,” Mr. Hopkins proposes in the essay before us to extract matter from numbers, or, as he says in the preface, “to show that ...