tantamount
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Anglo-Norman tant amunter.
Pronunciation[edit]
Verb[edit]
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.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Jeremy Taylor to this entry?)
Noun[edit]
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:
Adjective[edit]
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.
- De Quincey
- The certainty that delay, under these circumstances, was tantamount to ruin.
Usage notes[edit]
Tantamount is used almost exclusively in the phrase tantamount to, but may also be used by itself.
Quotations[edit]
- 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
Translations[edit]
Equivalent in meaning or effect
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