Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To take away; deduct.
  • intransitive verb To perform the arithmetic operation of subtraction.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To withdraw or take away, as a part from a whole; deduct.
  • Synonyms Subtract, Deduct. See deduct.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To withdraw, or take away, as a part from the whole; to deduct.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To remove or reduce; especially to reduce a quantity or number

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb make a subtraction
  • verb take off or away

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin subtrahere, subtract- : sub-, sub- + trahere, to draw.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin subtractus, perfect passive participle of subtrahō ("I draw from beneath; withdraw, remove"); from sub ("under") + trahō ("I draw, pull, drag").

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