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Amount vs Tantamount - What's the difference?

amount | tantamount |

As nouns the difference between amount and tantamount

is that amount is the total, aggregate or sum of material not applicable to discrete numbers or units or items in standard English while tantamount is something which has the same value or amount (as something else). attributive use passing into adjective, below.

As verbs the difference between amount and tantamount

is that amount is to total or evaluate while tantamount is to amount to as much; to be equivalent.

As an adjective tantamount is

equivalent in meaning or effect.

amount

English

(Quantity)

Noun

(en noun)
  • The total, aggregate or sum of material (not applicable to discrete numbers or units or items in standard English).
  • A quantity or volume.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-26, author=(Leo Hickman)
  • , volume=189, issue=7, page=26, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= How algorithms rule the world , passage=The use of algorithms in policing is one example of their increasing influence on our lives.
  • 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.

    Derived terms

    * principal amount * notional amount

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To total or evaluate.
  • It amounts to three dollars and change.
  • 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) To go up; to ascend.
  • * Spenser
  • So up he rose, and thence amounted straight.

    Derived terms

    * amount to

    See also

    * extent * magnitude * measurement * number * quantity * size

    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