sum total meaning: definition, quotations

sum total

nounalso spelled sum-total

Total; the result of adding a set of figures or counting a number of items.

It may be noted that the maximum number and sum total in points of the table may be changed to the second mode simply by multiplying them by two.1890, The British Chess Magazine - Volume 10, page 494:
This column should contain the remainder after deducting the amounts for each town or ward in column 5 from those in column 4, observed that the sum total of column 5, when deducted from the sum total of column 4, is equal to the sum total of column 6.1896, New York (N.Y.) Board of Aldermen, Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen - Volume 220, page 148:

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The average Btu value of coal by coal-producing area was applied to the volume of deliveries to other industrial users from each coal-producing area, and the sum total of the heat content was divided by the total volume of deliveries.2000, Monthly Energy Review: March 2000, →ISBN, page 160:
The sum total does not match current genebank holdings (1,238,000) as this table only covers those accessions properly described and reported to IBPGR as of 1991.2013, Renee Vellve, Saving the Seed: Genetic diversity and European agriculture, →ISBN:

Entirety; the aggregate of everything.

The sum total of my belongings is the clothes in my knapsack.
A very wise person once told me that I was “greater than the sum total of everything that has happened, is happening, or will ever happen” in my life.2014, DC Doyle, Greater Than The Sum Total: A Novel, →ISBN:

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For six days I witnessed the giving of a number of treatments. That was the sum total of information that was transferred in exchange for tuition paid.2002, Paul Benedetti, Wayne MacPhail, Spin Doctors: The Chiropractic Industry Under Examination, →ISBN, page 36:
Consider this definition of disease (to go back a step) from a medical dictionary: “A specific entity which is the sum total of the numerous expressions of one or more pathological processes.2004, Eric J. Cassell, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine, →ISBN, page 98:

Epitome.

Moreover, by and by the Church will come "out of the tribulation, the great one," the sum total of all tribulations.1998, William Hendriksen, More Than Conquerors: An Interpretation of the Book of Revelation, →ISBN:
He is the sum total of all vice and that woman is the abode of all virtue; that wicked man is fire incarnate; she is cool like snow.2006, Phyllis Granoff, The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden, →ISBN:

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If there be one name more charming, more precious than another, it is this name. It is woven into the very warp and woof of our psalmody. Many of our hymns begin with it, and scarcely any, that are good for anything, end without it. It is the sum total of all delights.2008, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Devotional Classics of C. H. Spurgeon, →ISBN, page 8:

noun

› Alternative form of sum total.

Total.

We first add the sums in the money columns of the credit side of the account, and find they amount to $57 .50, which is the sum-total of all I have received from him.1855, Ira Mayhew, A Practical System of Book-Keeping by single and double entry:
The armies of the two, embracing regular trrops and those subject to call, did not differ much in numbers, unless we set aside the "Almanach de Gotha,", which puts the military force of France somewhat vaguely at 1,350,000, while that of North Germany is only 977,262, to which must be added 49,949 for Bavaria, 34,953 for Wuertemberg, and 43,703 for Baden, making a sum-total of 1,105,867.1871, Charles Sumner, The Duel Between France and Germany, →ISBN:

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Note that the sample size is less than the sum-total of Whethersfield family-heads in 1668.2004, John Putnam Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England, →ISBN:
Consequently the sum-total that you ought to have in hand soon is how much? 12,000 roubles. Is that right?"2014, Leo graf Tolstoy, Childhood, →ISBN:

Entirety.

Shakspere's plots are, almost without exception, distinguished by their complexity. The mystery or surprise which makes up the sum-total of many a plot, becomes in Shakspere only one amongst many details.1887, R.G. Moulton, “On Othello as a Type of Plot”, in Publications of the New Shakspere Society, page 431:
If I am right, Wittgenstein's claim, "The sum-total of reality is the world" (2.063), which has mystified many, amounts to the assertion that the actual world is the sum-total of all realities, that is, facts.1992, Raymond Bradley, The Nature of All Being: A Study of Wittgenstein's Modal Atomism, →ISBN:

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Complete determination demands a comparison of the thing with the sum-total of all possible predicates.2012 -, E.E. Kleist, Judging Appearances, →ISBN:
The latter assumption is not entirely without justification; for if one defines "history" as the sum-total of human events, and “society” as the sum-total of myriads of human beings and their activities, then one may claim that, insofar as they both designate sum-totals, the two terms are interchangeable.2012, Nathan Rotenstreich, Time and Meaning in History, →ISBN, pages 97–98:

Epitome.

He is the end of creation. "The sum-total of all animals.” He is the great archetype to which all creation has tended, from its first and humblest form, upward and onward through every fresh effort of God's creating power.1869, W. Weldon Champneys, Things New and Old: Sermons preached at St. Paul's and St. Pancras, page 38:
She then shared her idolatrous image with Adam, who represented the sum-total of God's creation.2006, Yitzhak Ben Aaron Levy, Yeshua, →ISBN, page 81:

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...principle of the Negative which culminates in Death as the sum-total of all limitations, and which introduces at every step those restrictions which are of the nature of Death, because their tendency is to curtail the outflowing fulness of Life.2012, Thomas Troward, My Essential Writings, →ISBN: