subtract
English
[edit]
Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Borrowed from Latin subtractus, perfect passive participle of subtrahō (“to draw from beneath; withdraw, remove”); from sub (“under”) + trahō (“to draw, pull, drag”).
Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]subtract (third-person singular simple present subtracts, present participle subtracting, simple past and past participle subtracted)
- (transitive, 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.
- 2022 August 7, Alec Wilkinson, “Could learning algebra in my 60s make me smarter?”, in The Guardian[1], archived from the original on 22 March 2023:
- 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.
Synonyms
[edit]Antonyms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]to remove or reduce
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