Enlargement is the act of making something bigger, or the result of making it bigger. When you zoom in on a photo on your phone, you're creating an enlargement that lets you see tiny details you couldn't notice before. When a print shop makes an enlargement of a small photograph, they produce a larger version of the same image.

The word appears frequently in mathematics and science. In geometry, an enlargement transforms a shape into a bigger version while keeping the same proportions. If you enlarge a triangle where each side is 2 inches to one where each side is 4 inches, you've created an enlargement with a scale factor of 2. The new triangle looks identical to the original, just bigger.

Doctors use the word when something in the body grows larger than normal, like an enlarged heart or an enlargement of the liver. Scientists might study an enlargement of cells under a microscope to see details invisible to the naked eye.

The verb form is enlarge. You might enlarge a map to see street names more clearly, or enlarge a winning shot from your soccer game to hang on your wall. When something gets bigger on its own, like a crowd that enlarges as more people arrive, you can also use this word to describe that growth.