sum total

plural sum totals · alternative sum-total · alternative sumtotal

1. 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

   3 more examples

   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

   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

   Synonyms: aggregate

2. Entirety; the aggregate of everything.

   The sum total of my belongings is the clothes in my knapsack.

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   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

   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

3. 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

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   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

   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