Other forms: calculated, calculating, calculates
To calculate is to work out an answer with numbers. Adding up a bill in your head, working out how much paint the room needs, checking whether the train plus the taxi still comes to less than driving.
Calculate also means to judge something carefully with no sum in sight: "we calculated that the risk was worth taking". From that comes calculated, which is a warning word — a calculated risk was thought through, but a calculated insult was aimed to hurt, and calculating about a person means cold and out for themselves. The noun is calculation, and the machine is a calculator. Compute is the near-twin: computers compute, people calculate.
1verbcalculateTo work out an amount or an answer using numbers.~92%
“She calculated the cost of the whole trip in her head.”
synonyms: compute, work out
2verbjudgeTo judge or work something out by careful thought.~6%
“They calculated that the road would be quieter at six.”
3verbdeliberatelyTo be deliberately designed to have a particular effect, used as "calculated to".~2%
“His remark was calculated to annoy her.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: compute
Romans did their sums with pebbles. Latin calculus meant a little stone, and calculō meant to reckon with them — push a few across the counting board and you have your total. Calculate comes straight from calculātus, the participle of that verb. Calculus, the branch of mathematics, is the same pebble.
Latin
calculō
English, today
calculate
Built from
Borrowed from Latin calculō. Latin calculātus, perfect passive participle of calculō (“to reckon, compute, calculate”) (see -ate), from calculus (“a pebble”), further from calx + -ulus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA