Figure and number overlap but are not the same. A number is the abstract value — how many, the count or mathematical quantity itself. A figure is that value as it is written down (the digits) or as it is reported and measured — sales figures, the latest figures, a four-figure sum. As a quantity, every figure names a number; but figure adds the sense of a written digit or an official reported amount.
The words meet at 'a quantity' and diverge on either side of it. Number is the pure idea: the count of things, the value on the line, the answer to 'how many'. Figure is more concrete in two directions at once — it is the symbol you write the number with (the digit, as in 'a three-figure price'), and it is the number as data, produced and reported (unemployment figures, the quarterly figures). So a figure is a number wearing clothes: either the written form, or the reported measurement. And figure has whole other lives — a diagram, a shape, a person — that number never touches.
figure
A figure is a number that names an amount — a count, a total, a precise value you could read straight off a page. It traces back to the Latin figura, 'shape or form': first the drawn shape of a written numeral, then the numeral itself, and finally the quantity it stands for. Unlike a statistic, which is distilled from a whole body of data, a figure is simply the value on its own. From a single figure a reader can infer very little about how it was reached, which is why exact numbers still need context.
number
A number is how many there are of separate things you can count one by one — people, errors, marbles, days. Each unit is distinct, so you tally them rather than weigh or measure them, and the result is exact: three, forty, a thousand. It goes with 'many' and 'fewer' (a large number, a small number). From Latin numerus. Set it against amount, which is for a single uncountable mass. To say 'a number of' is a quiet way to say 'several' without fixing exactly how many.
| figure | number | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | a number as written, or as reported | the abstract value or count itself |
| Leans toward | the digit; official / measured data | how many; the mathematical quantity |
| Classic use | sales figures, in figures, four-figure | a phone number, the number of cases |
| Every figure is… | a number, dressed as data or digits | not always a figure (it may be spoken, abstract) |
| Other senses | a diagram, a shape, a person | a numeral's grammatical 'number' (sing./pl.) |
| Register | reported, precise, official | plain, general |
The locking counter and the counted cubes. A figure is the exact written value the counter lands on, or the reported total in a table — a number made concrete as digits or data. A number is simply how many cubes are on the saucer, the count itself, however you write or say it. Ask whether you mean the written or reported amount, or the bare quantity. Written down or officially reported: figure. The count or value in the abstract: number. And if it is a chart or a person, only figure will do.
figure
- iThe unemployment figures came out this morning.
- iiWrite the amount in figures, then again in words.
- iiiShe earns a comfortable six-figure salary.
number
- iThe number of applications doubled this year.
- iiPick a number between one and ten.
- iiiHe forgot the last two digits of the number.
Figure's extra senses are the deeper trap, because they have nothing to do with quantity: a figure can be a diagram in a report ('see Figure 3'), a bodily shape ('a slim figure'), or a person of note ('a public figure'). None of these is a number at all, so context has to carry the word. Number keeps one specialist sense of its own — the grammatical 'number' that makes a noun singular or plural. How figure differs from statistic — a written value against one distilled from data — is drawn on its own page in the 'Related' list below.
Task 1 rewards the reporting distinction. A figure is a specific value read off a chart — 'sales reached a figure of 4,000 units' — while 'the number of' introduces a count: 'the number of visitors rose'. Use figures for the measured, reported amounts a graph presents, and 'the number of X' when you are counting cases. One more exam habit: amounts are written in figures (2,500) or in words (two thousand five hundred), and the instruction 'in figures' means the digits.