subtract
verbUS /səbˈtɹækt/
Etymology Borrowed from Latin subtractus, perfect passive participle of subtrahō (“to draw from beneath; withdraw, remove”); from sub (“under”) + trahō (“to draw, pull, drag”).
1
Arithmetic To remove or reduce; especially to reduce a quantity or number.
- If you subtract the $100 for gas from the total cost, it was a fairly inexpensive trip.
- I could add and subtract and multiply and divide, but I entered the wilderness when words became equations. […] The axioms of arithmetic imply that when you expand (a + b)², for example, you get a² + 2ab + b² in the following way: (a + b)² is equal to (a + b)(a + b). Each term in one parentheses multiplies the terms in the other: a × a = a² ; a × b = ab; b × a = ab; b × b = b². Combining the terms, a² + ab + ab + b² = a² + 2ab + b². In a similar way, a² – b², a squared number subtracted from another squared number, called a difference of squares, becomes (a – b)(a + b), which becomes a² + ab – ab – b², which is a² – b².2022 August 7, Alec Wilkinson, “Could learning algebra in my 60s make me smarter?”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 22 Mar 2023:
- Derived terms
- missubtract, subtractable, subtracter, subtractive, unsubtracted
- Related terms
- subtraction, subtractor
- Hypernyms
- calculate
- Holonyms
- arithmetic