Total

How to spell total

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce total

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does total mean?

1. nounThe whole amount produced by adding everything together.
2. adjectiveComplete, absolute, or comprising the whole.
3. verbTo add up to a sum, or to wreck something completely.

Total in a sentence

• noun

  The total at the bottom of the invoice was higher than expected.

• adjective

  The power cut caused a total blackout across the district.

• verb

  The columns of figures should total exactly five thousand.

• noun

  She checked the receipt and queried the total.

• adjective

  His account of the meeting was a total fabrication.

• verb

  A careless skid was enough to total the new car.

Where does total come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin totus, meaning 'whole' or 'entire'. From this came the Medieval Latin totalis, an adjective describing something complete or whole, which passed into Old French as total before reaching English in the late 1300s. It first served as an adjective meaning 'complete' or 'entire', and the noun sense, the whole amount reached by adding things together, grew naturally out of that. The same Latin totus survives in everyday relatives such as 'totally' and 'totality', and the verb sense, to add up or to wreck completely, is a later development driven by accounting and, in modern slang, by car insurance. The spelling stays mercifully regular: a single 't' in the middle, with the trap being the urge to double a consonant that simply is not there.

How the word is built

• tot- (from Latin totus: whole, entire)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)