Total Meaning
/ˈtəʊ.tl̩/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounAn amount obtained by the addition of smaller amounts.
nounSum.
Sentence Examples
How much money did you spend in total?
Our total debts amount to ten thousand dollars.
Their total cost was $18 000.
Synonyms & Antonyms
Antonyms:
CEFR Practice Quiz
The ____ cost of the entire project was over one million dollars.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The ____ cost of the repair for the car was much higher than we had originally expected last week today.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English total, from Old French total, from Medieval Latin tōtālis, from tōtus (“all, whole, entire”) + -ālis, the former element of unknown origin. Perhaps related to Oscan touto (“community, city-state”), Umbrian 𐌕𐌏𐌕𐌀𐌌 (totam, “tribe”, acc.), Old English þēod (“a nation, people, tribe”), from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂ (“people”). More at English Dutch, English thede.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers,[…]. Even such a boat as the Mount Vernon offered a total deck space so cramped as to leave secrecy or privacy well out of the question, even had the motley and democratic assemblage of passengers been disposed to accord either."
— 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
"Each member brought a unique musical influence to the total sound."
— 1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 145:
"Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month."
— 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
"Air waid! Wights out! Total bwackout!"
— 1942 November 21, A Tale of Two Kitties, spoken by Tweety:
"He acted real funny / He hocked up a rock and / It totaled my car!"
— 1972, Frank Zappa, “Billy the Mountain”:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The ____ cost of the entire project was over one million dollars.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The ____ cost of the repair for the car was much higher than we had originally expected last week today.