Obs. Also 7 tant amount, tant-amount, tant’amount. [a. AF. tant amunter, or perh. (in 17th c.) ad. It. tanto montare to amount to as much.
Cf. 1292. Year-bk. Trin. 20 Edw. I. (Rolls), 31. Tant amunte qe Adam neyt pas plus procheyn heyr.
1303. Year-bk. Mich. 31 Edw. I., 335. Herle dist … qe tant amunte qil ne entra pas dans soun baroun.]
1. intr. To amount to as much, to come to the same thing; to be or become equivalent. Const. to or unto (something).
1628. Coke, On Litt., I. i. § 1. 10. They doe tant amount to a feoffment or grant. Ibid., 391. It ought to be pardoned specially, or by words which tant amount.
1642. Jer. Taylor, Episc., ix. (1647), 36. Yet this will not tant’-amount to an immediate Divine institution for Deacons.
1659. Fuller, App. Inj. Innoc., III. 7. His not denying tant-amounteth to the affirming of the matter.
1699. Salmon, Bate’s Dispens. (1713), a vij. Those Things … which may tantamount to more than an hundred times its Value.
1716. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., II. 211. Tant-amounting, in a more reform’d Perfection, to the different Religious Orders.
2. trans. To amount or come up to (something); to equal.
1659. T. Pecke, Parnassi Puerp., 132. Account Hercules Labours; they Twelve tantamount.
1683. Vind. Case relating to Green-Wax-Fines, 65. Your peaceable Subjects … whose indearment in that case will tant-amount the Profits falling short.
Hence † Tantamounting ppl. a. (obs. rare–0); whence † Tantamountingly adv., ‘equivalently, in effect’ (Davies).
1655. Fuller, Ch. Hist., II. ii. § 28. Did it not deserve the Stab of Excommunication, for any dissenting from her practice, tantamountingly to give her the Lie?
