Etymologically
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amount

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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.
  • 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