SUBTRACTION • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Subtraction

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/səbtrˈækʃən/ Listen

noun

Subtraction n.

The act or operation of subtracting or taking away a part.

(Math.) The taking of a lesser number or quantity from a greater of the same kind or denomination; an operation for finding the difference between two numbers or quantities.

(Law) The withdrawing or withholding from a person of some right to which he is entitled by law. Note: Thus the subtraction of conjugal rights is when either the husband or wife withdraws from the other and lives separate without sufficient reason. The subtraction of a legacy is the withholding or detailing of it from the legatee by the executor. In like manner, the withholding of any service, rent, duty, or custom, is a subtraction, for which the law gives a remedy.

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Etymology of 'Subtraction'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Subtraction" Quotes from Famous Books

... stream of feeling and grow most easily confluent with some particular wave or wavelet. Such confluence not only proves the intellectual operation to have been true (as an addition may 'prove' that a subtraction is already rightly performed), but it constitutes, according to pragmatism, all that we mean by calling it true. Only in so far as they lead us, successfully or unsuccessfully, into sensible experience again, are our abstracts and universals ...

— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... afternoon. The most exciting feature of this weekly frivolity consisted of a free-for-all exercise in mental arithmetic. Mr. Hinman gave out lists of numbers, beginning with easy ones and speaking slowly; each succeeding list he dictated more rapidly and with ever-increasing complications of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, until at last he was giving them out faster than he could talk. One by one the pupils dropped out of the race with despairing faces, but always at ...

— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... should be concerned in regard to old loves has never been wholly clear. One might as well fancy a clean slate, freshly and elaborately dedicated to noble composition, being bothered by the addition and subtraction which was once ...

— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... have a thorough mastery and ready knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division before we can proceed to teach them measurements or fractions. And without doubt much time is wasted in attempting to teach these subjects without a ready command of the fundamental operations. Further, pupils must know well ...

— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts

... any older, because she always looked as old as she could; who always dried her catnip and wormwood the last of September, and began to clean house the first of May. In short, this was the land of continuance. Old Time never took it into his head to practise either addition, or subtraction, or multiplication on ...

— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

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