Other forms: votes, voted, voting
To vote is to choose, formally, by marking a paper or raising a hand. Vote in an election, vote for a candidate, vote on a proposal.
The prepositions carry real meaning and are worth learning as a set: vote for somebody you support, vote against something you oppose, vote on a question that is being decided, and vote in an election. The noun is both the act and the result: cast a vote, the vote was close. Note the right to vote, which is called the franchise or suffrage, and vote of no confidence, which is a specific parliamentary procedure with real consequences.
1verbvoteTo make a formal choice in an election or a decision.
“Almost seventy percent voted.”
2nountotalA formal choice made, or the total of them.
“The vote was won by four.”
3nounrightThe right to take part in elections.
“Women over thirty got the vote in 1918.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
vote is a formal choice.
Latin votum meant a vow or a promise made to a god, from vovere, to vow — the same root as vow and devote. Voting was originally a solemn undertaking rather than a preference, which is a rather better description of what an election is meant to be.
Latin
vōtum
English, today
vote
Built from
From Latin vōtum. From Latin vōtum, a form of voveō (“to vow”) (cognate with Ancient Greek εὔχομαι (“to vow”)), from Proto-Indo-European h₁wegʷʰ- (“to promise, to vow”). a doublet of vow.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA