amount
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English
Etymology
From Middle English amounten (“to mount up to, come up to, signify”), from Old French amonter (“to amount to”), from amont, amunt (“uphill, upward”), from the prepositional phrase a mont (“toward or to a mountain or heap”), from Latin ad montem, from ad (“to”) + montem, accusative of mons (“mountain”).
Pronunciation
Noun
amount (plural amounts)
- The total, aggregate or sum of material (not applicable to discrete numbers or units or items in standard English).
- The amount of atmospheric pollution threatens a health crisis.
- A quantity or volume.
- Pour a small amount of water into the dish.
- The dogs need different amounts of food.
- 2013 July 26, Leo Hickman, “How algorithms rule the world”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 7, page 26:
- The use of algorithms in policing is one example of their increasing influence on our lives. […] who, if anyone, is policing their use[?] Such concerns were sharpened further by the continuing revelations about how the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been using algorithms to help it interpret the colossal amounts of data it has collected from its covert dragnet of international telecommunications.
- (nonstandard, sometimes proscribed) The number (the sum) of elements in a set.
- 2001, Gisella Gori, Towards an EU right to education, page 195:
- The final amount of students who have participated to mobility for the period 1995-1999 is held to be around 460 000.
Usage notes
- Some consider the term amount to be reserved for immeasurable things (that is, things that one cannot put a specific quantity to, such as intangibles), and consider the term quantity to be the correct term for things that can be measured. However, even when referring to something measurable, the use of the term amount is so widespread that the two terms are in practice interchangeable for measurable things.
Hyponyms
Derived terms
Translations
total or sum of items
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quantity or volume
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number of elements in a set — see number
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Verb
amount (third-person singular simple present amounts, present participle amounting, simple past and past participle amounted)
- (intransitive, followed by to) To total or evaluate.
- The money in my pocket amounts to three dollars and change.
- (intransitive, followed by to) To be the same as or equivalent to.
- He was a pretty good student, but never amounted to much professionally.
- His response amounted to gross insubordination
- (obsolete, intransitive) To go up; to ascend.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 54:
- So up he rose, and thence amounted straight.
Translations
to total or evaluate
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to be the same as
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
See also
References
- ^ Amy Bryan (2021 November 10) “Commonly Confused Words: Amount vs. Number vs. Quantity”, in BKA, retrieved 21 June 2023
- ^ Craig Shrives (2023 June 21 (last accessed)) “Amount Of, Quantity Of, and Number Of”, in Grammar Monster
- ^ Manuel Rubina (2018 May 21) “The Difference between Amount, Quantity, and Number”, in The TR Company, retrieved 21 June 2023
- ^ “Amount vs. Quantity vs. Number”, in Chegg Writing, 2021 March 4, retrieved 21 June 2023
Further reading
- “amount”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “amount”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- “amount”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.