volum

Volum is a term used in several languages to denote different but related ideas tied to the notion of quantity or size. In Romanian, volum commonly means a single book within a larger work, i.e., a volume; it can also denote the amount or capacity of something, as in volum de apă. In mathematical and physical contexts, the corresponding English term is volume: the three-dimensional size of a region in space, measured in cubic meters (m^3). Volume is a fundamental property in geometry and physics, and it can be computed for regular shapes (for a rectangular prism with sides a, b, c the volume is abc; for a sphere of radius r it is 4/3 π r^3) or determined for irregular objects by displacement, integration, or decomposition. In higher mathematics, volume generalizes to hypervolume in n dimensions.

The concept of volume also appears in everyday language to describe capacity (the volume of a container) and, in audio equipment or software, the loudness level (the volume control). In bibliographic and publishing contexts, a single book in a multi-volume work is called a volume or, in some languages, volum.

The etymology of the term traces to Latin volumen, through Old French volume, with cognates across Romance and Germanic languages. Across its usages, volum/volume denotes a measure of extent in space, a countable part of a series, or a container’s capacity, all sharing the core idea of “how much.”