tantamount
adjEtymology
First attested in English in 1628. Either inherited from an unattested Middle English borrowing from Anglo-Norman tant amount, from amunter, from tant (“as much”) amonter (“to amount to”) or borrowed in the early 17th century from Italian tanto montare (“to amount to as much”).
- derived from tant amount
Definitions
Equivalent in meaning or effect
Equivalent in meaning or effect; amounting to the same thing in practical terms, even if being technically distinct.
- […] expecting the woman to take her attacker into physical custody is tantamount to preventing the arrest. If she could handle him, she probably would not need to call the police in the first place.
- In Bosnia, as in Rwanda, however, passive neutrality was tantamount to complicity with the perpetrators of “ethnic cleansing” and mass murder.
To amount to as much
To amount to as much; to be equivalent.
- […] and yet this will not tant’amount to an immediate Divine inſtitution for Deacons, and how can it then for Presbyters ?
Something which has the same value or amount (as something else). (attributive use…
Something which has the same value or amount (as something else). (attributive use passing into adjective, below)
- 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.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for tantamount. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA