add up

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add up (third-person singular simple present adds up, present participle adding up, simple past and past participle added up)

1. (transitive, of a numerical amount) To take the sum of; to total.

   Add up the prices and find out how much it will cost.

   When they added up the vaccine doses from all known and anticipate sources, they didn't have enough.

2. (intransitive) To accumulate; to amount to.

   If you can save even a couple of dollars per day, it will add up to a lot over a year.

   • 1994, Green Day (lyrics and music), “Basket Case”, in Dookie:

     It all keeps adding up / I think I'm cracking up / Am I just paranoid? / Or am I just stoned?

   • 2016, Christopher Walker, The First 49:

     The bus wound its way up into San Marino, passing through the various small castellos that add up to form the diminutive country, […]

3. (idiomatic, intransitive) To make sense; to be reasonable or consistent.

   His story just doesn't add up. Why would he have been at the restaurant the day before the event?

• (take a sum): sum up, tally; see also Thesaurus:summate
• (amount to): accrue, mount up; see also Thesaurus:accumulate
• (make sense): compute, hang together