Tantamount vs Messing - What's the difference?

tantamount | messing |

As verbs the difference between tantamount and messing

is that tantamount is (obsolete) to amount to as much; to be equivalent while messing is .

As a noun tantamount

is (obsolete) something which has the same value or amount (as something else).

As an adjective tantamount

is equivalent in meaning or effect.

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