amount

Pronunciation

• IPA: /əˈmaʊnt/^[1]

Etymology

The verb is inherited from Middle English amounten, borrowed from Old French amonter (“to rise, go up; to mean”),^[2][3] from amont (“upward, uphill”), literally “to the mountain”,^[2][3][4] from Latin ad montem (“to the hill”), from ad (“to”) and mōns (“mountain”),^[5][3] the source of mount and mountain.^[3][6] Etymonline traces mōns to Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to project”).^[2][5] The noun is from the verb.^[2][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

To go up, rise: about 1250,^[8] or about 1275,^[3] a sense now obsolete.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The meaning “to rise in number or quantity so as to reach, add up to” is from about 1300,^[2][8] and “to be equal to” from about 1350.^[3] The noun, “the sum total”, is from 1710;^[2][3][8] Middle English had the nouns amountance and amountment.^[2] The sum of principal and interest on a loan is from 1796,^[8] and a quantity viewed as a total from 1833.^[8] Any amount of, “a great deal”, is colloquial from 1893.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – verb, to go up.^[8]
• c. 1300 – verb, to add up to.^[2]
• 1710 – noun, the total.^[2][3][8]
• 1796 – principal plus interest.^[8]
• 1893 – any amount of.^[8]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A quantity: a large amount of sugar.
2. The total of two or more quantities; a sum.
3. A principal plus its interest.
4. The full effect or meaning.

Verb

1. To add up in number or quantity.
2. To be equivalent in effect: it amounts to treason.

Related words

• mount
• mountain
• paramount
• tantamount
• surmount

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press