tantamount
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
From Anglo-Norman tant amunter.
[edit] Pronunciation
[edit] Verb
tantamount (third-person singular simple present tantamounts, present participle tantamounting, simple past and past participle tantamounted)
- (obsolete) To amount to as much; to be equivalent.
[edit] Noun
tantamount (plural tantamounts)
- (obsolete) Something which has the same value or amount (as something else). (attributive use passing into adjective, below)
- 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.
- 1977, the Last Essays of Maurice Hewlett, page 42:
[edit] Adjective
tantamount (comparative more tantamount, superlative most tantamount)
- Equivalent in meaning or effect.
- It's tantamount to fraud.
- In this view, disagreement and treason are tantamount.
[edit] Usage notes
Tantamount is used almost exclusively in the phrase tantamount to, but may also be used by itself.
[edit] 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
[edit] Translations
Equivalent in meaning or effect
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