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Tantamount vs Akin - What's the difference?

tantamount | akin |

As adjectives the difference between tantamount and akin

is that tantamount is equivalent in meaning or effect while akin is of the same kin; related by blood.

As a verb tantamount

is to amount to as much; to be equivalent.

As a noun tantamount

is something which has the same value or amount (as something else). attributive use passing into adjective, below.

tantamount

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • (obsolete) To amount to as much; to be equivalent.
    • (Jeremy Taylor)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) Something which has the same value or amount (as something else).
  • * 1977 , the Last Essays of Maurice Hewlett , page 42:
    • For end thereof, not despondency but madness : for when Cossey understood that Hobday had called his wife a tantamount , he waited for him outside, and gave him what he called a pair of clippers over the ear.

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Equivalent in meaning or effect.
    • It's tantamount to fraud.
    In this view, disagreement and treason are tantamount .
  • * De Quincey
    • the certainty that delay, under these circumstances, was tantamount to ruin
  • * 1981 , Del Martin, Battered Wives (page 90)
    • expecting the woman to take her attacker into physical custody is tantamount to preventing the arrest. If she could handle him, she probably would not need to call the police in the first place.

    Usage notes

    Tantamount is used almost exclusively in the phrase tantamount to , but may also be used by itself.

    Quotations

    * 2003': In Bosnia, as in Rwanda, however, passive neutrality was '''tantamount to complicity with the perpetrators of "ethnic cleansing" and mass murder — ''The New Yorker, 3 March 2003

    akin

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (of persons) Of the same kin; related by blood.
  • * 1722 , , Moll Flanders , ch. 23:
    • We are too near akin to lie together, though we may lodge near one another.
  • (often, followed by to) Allied by nature; similar; partaking of the same properties; of the same kind.
  • * 1677 , , The Court of the Gentiles , T. Cockeril, part 4, bk. 1, ch. 2, p. 27:
    • Is not then Fruition near akin to Love?
  • * 1710 , anon., "To the Spectator, &c.," The Spectator , vol. 1, no. 8 (March 9), p. 39:
    • She told me that she hoped my Face was not akin to my Tongue.
  • * 1814 , , Mansfield Park , ch. 44:
    • Such sensations, however, were too near akin to resentment to be long guiding Fanny's soliloquies.
  • * 1837 , , The Pickwick Papers , ch. 39:
    • Mr. Winkle . . . took his hand with a feeling of regard, akin to veneration.
  • * 1910 , , "Old Well-Well," Success (July):
    • Something akin to a smile shone on his face.

    Usage notes

    * This adjective is always placed after the noun that it modifies.

    Anagrams

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