amount

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”).

• enPR: ə.mount', IPA^(key): /əˈmaʊnt/

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• Rhymes: -aʊnt

amount (plural amounts)

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. (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.

• 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.[1][2][3][4] 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.

• batch
• bolus
• notional amount
• principal amount
• serving (helping, portion)

amount (third-person singular simple present amounts, present participle amounting, simple past and past participle amounted)

1. (intransitive, followed by to) To total or evaluate.

   The money in my pocket amounts to three dollars and change.

2. (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

3. (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.

• extent
• magnitude
• measurement
• number
• quantity
• size

• “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.

• mantou, moutan, outman, tomaun