Other forms: totals, totaling, totaled, totalling, totalled
The total is the whole amount once everything has been added up. The number at the bottom of a receipt, the final score, the figure on the invoice after the last line.
As an adjective, total means complete with nothing left out: total silence, a total stranger, a total disaster. There it sits in front of the noun and gives it force rather than measuring anything. As a verb it does two jobs, one plain and one American: the bill totals eighty-four pounds, and he totalled the car means he wrecked it beyond repair. The phrase you will use most is in total, as in eleven people in total. A sum is what you get from adding numbers, while a total can be the whole of anything you counted, and in speech totally has drifted away from all this into meaning simply yes, absolutely.
1nountotalThe whole amount reached by adding everything together.~79%
“The total came to just under two hundred pounds.”
2adjectivecompleteComplete, with nothing missing or held back.~17%
“The room fell into total silence.”
3verbparticularTo add up to a particular amount.~2%
“The repairs totalled more than the car was worth.”
4verbdamageIn informal American English, to damage a vehicle beyond repair.~2%
“He skidded on the ice and totalled his father's van.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 23 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Total came through Old French from Medieval Latin totalis, built on totus, whole or entire. Where totus itself came from nobody has settled; one line of thought links it to an old Indo-European word for a people or tribe, the root behind Old English theod, a nation. A total is the whole of the thing, all of it accounted for.
Medieval Latin
tōtālis
Old French
total
Middle English
total
English, today
total
From Middle English total, from Old French total, from Medieval Latin tōtālis, from tōtus + -ālis, the former element of unknown origin. Perhaps related to osc touto (“community, city-state”), xum 𐌕𐌏𐌕𐌀𐌌 (“tribe”), Old English þēod (“a nation, people, tribe”), from Proto-Indo-European tewtéh₂ (“people”). More at English Dutch, English thede.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA