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Subtraction   /səbtrˈækʃən/   Listen
Subtraction

noun
1.
An arithmetic operation in which the difference between two numbers is calculated.  Synonym: minus.  "Four minus three equals one"
2.
The act of subtracting (removing a part from the whole).  Synonym: deduction.






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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

... reason, was female, ever changing by addition, subtraction, or multiplication. It represents matter ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... any rubber under the old method while the same rubber is being scored by some one familiar with the advantages of the new. The result is sure to be most convincing. Under the new method, the short sums in addition or subtraction are mentally computed, during the deal of the cards, etc. This occupies waste time only, and at the end of the rubber, leaves a very simple, frequently nothing more than a ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... admitted to the school as a student who can not pass the examination for the C Preparatory class. To enter this class one must be able to read, write, and understand addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Applicants for admission must be of good moral character and must bring at least two letters of recommendation as to their moral character from ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... se'night on which Christ had appeared to them before; and from this we may learn that this was the weekly meeting of the Apostles." Now it appears to me that a little child, with the simple rules of addition and subtraction, could have refuted this man. I feel astonished that men who profess to be ambassadors for God do not expose such downright perversion of scripture, but it may look clear to those who want to have it so. Not ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates

... Dartie—for restitution of those conjugal rights concerning which Winifred was at heart so deeply undecided, followed the laws of subtraction towards day of judgment. This was not reached before the Courts rose for Christmas, but the case was third on the list when they sat again. Winifred spent the Christmas holidays a thought more fashionably than usual, with the matter locked up in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... alone sufficient to determine the weight of the chemical molecule? Third, In the case of an element forming two or more distinct series of compounds, e.g., ferrous and ferric salts, is the transition from one series to another necessarily connected with the addition or subtraction of an even number of hydrogenoid atoms? He would, however, limit himself to the first of these questions; at the same time the three questions were so closely associated with one another that in discussing the first it was difficult to know where to begin. The answer ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... thus thy brain: For Genius never gave delight By means of what offends the sight: Nor hadst thou deem'd, with folly mad, Thou could'st to Nature's beauties add, By taking from her that which gives The best assurance that she lives; By imperfection give attraction, And multiply them by subtraction. ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston

... of mental images and ideas with deductions therefrom, and with a corresponding power of detaching them from one another. Hobbes, the Professor tells us, maintained this long ago, when he said that all our thinking consists of addition and subtraction—that is to say, in bringing ideas together, and in ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... Unlucky Red Card if figuring as Master-Card; meaning a personal Event of importance going awry; a Subtraction that must be admitted to others. But if influenced by like suit, it is a favorable card and indicates a pleasing Journey, or Meeting. By a Heart, an Enemy or evil opinion altered in your favor. By a Club a Proposal of tempting ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson

... of a living language to be in flux{128} and flow, to be gaining and losing; the words which constitute it as little continuing exactly the same, or in the same relations to one another, as do the atoms which at any one moment make up our bodies remain for ever without subtraction or addition. As I then undertook for my especial subject to trace some of the acquisitions which our own language had made, I shall consider in the present some of the losses, or at any rate diminutions, which during the same period it has ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... both crippled topmasts fell, taking with them the mizzentopgallantmast. Luckily, no one was hurt, and they disgustedly cut the wreck adrift, stayed the fore- and mainmasts with the hawser, and resigning themselves to a large subtraction from their salvage, went to a late breakfast—a savory meal of smoking fried ham and potatoes, hot cakes and coffee served to sixteen in the cabin, and an unsavory meal of "hardtack-hash," with an infusion of burnt bread-crust, pease, beans, and leather, handed, but not served, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... when I presented myself to the angry publisher for payment, what was meant by a sheet. It was measured by an abominable iron instrument, on which the lines of the columns were marked off with figures; this was applied to the article, and after careful subtraction of the spaces left for the title and signature, the lines were added up. After this process had been gone through, it appeared that what I had taken for a sheet was only half ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... knowledge of men, and a strict accordance with the established custom of the mystics, who never make the mistake of giving the higher spiritual mathematics to the students who are learning the addition, subtraction and division rules of the occult. He cautioned His apostles regarding this point of teaching, even going so far as warning them positively and strongly ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... seen that the latter method is by addition, the former by subtraction. Another variety of the latter is found in the annals. For instance, "ninety-nine years" is not expressed by bolonlahutuyokal haab, nor yet by cankal haab catac bolonlahunpel haab, but by hunpel haab minan ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various

... mystery of telling time. He wished—oh, how he wished he had let Sheelah teach him! Then he could have stood here making little addition sums and finding out just how long it would be till night. Or he could go away and keep coming back here to make little subtraction sums, to find out how much time was left now—and now—and now. It was dreadful to just stand and ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... the cause of the beautiful, greatness the cause of the great, smallness of the small, and so on of other things. This is a safe and simple answer, which escapes the contradictions of greater and less (greater by reason of that which is smaller!), of addition and subtraction, and the other difficulties of relation. These subtleties he is for leaving to wiser heads than his own; he prefers to test ideas by the consistency of their consequences, and, if asked to give an account of them, goes back to some higher idea or hypothesis ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato

... were many spare half hours in the course of the long days, which were devoted to the puzzling grammar and arithmetic, and gradually light was beginning to dawn over not only the addition but the subtraction table; or, more properly speaking, the addition circle. Tode nightly chuckled over his invention as he started from a new figure and raced glibly around to the climax, thereby calling forth the unqualified approbation of Winny, not unmixed now and then ...
— Three People • Pansy

... instantly with the first, nor except by accident with the last, but indifferently aided by aristocratic forces or by democratic, shifting weights which sometimes called for accessories of gravity, sometimes for subtraction, mighty fluctuating wheels which sometimes needed flywheels to moderate or harmonize, sometimes needed concurrent wheels to urge or aggravate their impetus—these were the powers which he had found ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... severally composed. But this is enough to produce a number of acids apparently very dissimilar. That they do not, however, differ essentially, is proved by their susceptibility of being converted into each other, by the addition or subtraction of a portion of hydrogen or of carbon. The names of these ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... associability to its natural standard, the fever is cured, not being liable to return. If the quantity of these sensorial powers be reduced only so much, as not to produce a second cold fit during the present quantity of external stimuli or influences; yet it may be so far reduced, that a very small subtraction of stimulus, or of influence, may again induce a cold fit; such as the coldness of the night-air, or the diminution of solar or lunar gravitation, as ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... gratuitous patrimony of consumers, of society, of mankind. Countries, therefore, which do not enjoy these advantages, must gain by commerce with those which do; because the exchanges of commerce are between labor and labor, subtraction being made of all the natural advantages which are combined with these labors; and it is evidently the most favored countries which can incorporate into a given labor the largest proportion of these natural advantages. ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... computations; but what he does understand is that if Chicago be not drained immediately, the amiable cholera may be expected to put in an early appearance. Mr. Superintendent RAUCH prints an aggravating table to show, by multiplication, addition, subtraction, division, and the rule of three, that if you don't drain you will have cholera, while if you do drain you will escape it. Under the circumstances, we should ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... fare. This consideration had not entered in before, and it did not now for long affect the glow of Carrie's enthusiasm. Disposed as she then was to calculate upon that vague basis which allows the subtraction of one sum from another without any perceptible diminution, she ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... States, was a certain integral portion of their wealth and prosperity. The great cities of the seaboard could spare a thousand men with far less loss than would accrue to any of the States I have mentioned, by the subtraction of a hundred. There is now a great demand for men to fill the vacancy caused by deaths in the field, and to occupy the extensive areas that are still uncultivated. Emigrants without capital will seek the West, where their stout arms will make ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... she could not be cut loose. Martha was as much a part of this very strange life as James was. So this meant that any revision in overall policy must necessarily include the addition of Tim Fisher and not the subtraction ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... mathematics finds there. There is, of course, this difference between the two cases, that words and letters have been invented by a positive effort of humanity, while space arises automatically, as the remainder of a subtraction arises once the two numbers are posited.[80] But, in the one case as in the other, the infinite complexity of the parts and their perfect coordination among themselves are created at one and the same time by an inversion which is, at bottom, an interruption, that is to say, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... attain great ends. There must be prudence, wisdom, and dexterity." "We should," he said, "do everything by reason and calculation, estimating the trouble, the sacrifice, and the pleasure entailed in gaining a certain end, in the same way as we work out any sum in arithmetic by addition and subtraction. But reason and logic should be the guiding principle in all we do. That which is bad in politics, even though in strict accordance with law, is inexcusable unless absolutely necessary, and whatever goes beyond that is criminal." These were briefly the general principles on which he shaped ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... abstract general ideas and generic concepts arise, to which nothing real corresponds, for in reality particulars alone exist. The universal is a human artefact. The combination of words into propositions, being an addition or subtraction of arbitrary symbols or marks, is called judgment; the combination of propositions into syllogisms, inference; the united body of true or demonstrated principles, science—hence mathematics is the type of all knowledge. In short, thought is nothing ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... mass, or moles,—supple and elastic as all flesh is, and fitting into the hard corners of the inert matter,—such a subtraction, Mrs. Primmins, would leave a vacuum which no natural system, certainly no artificial organization, could sustain. There would be a regular dance of atoms, Mrs. Primmins; my books would fly here, there, on the floor, out ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the imagination. It is a common and sober reality. It is what we see almost every day of our lives; and we live in the midst of such scenes and such events. With the addition or subtraction of a few circumstances, it is the case of every one of the common drunkards around us. They have not completed the drama—they are alive—but they are going to death with rapid strides, as their predecessors have already gone. ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... fails, a gap is made, the chain breaks, and the progress in numbering can go no further. So that to reckon right, it is required, (1) That the mind distinguish carefully two ideas, which are different one from another only by the addition or subtraction of ONE unit: (2) That it retain in memory the names or marks of the several combinations, from an unit to that number; and that not confusedly, and at random, but in that exact order that the numbers ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... from our sight, and the benediction of his genial face has come to its long amen. But his influence halted not a half-second for his obsequies to finish, but goes right on without change, save that of augmentation, for in the great sum of a useful life death is a multiplication instead of subtraction, and the tombstone, instead of being the goal of the race, is only the starting point. What means this rising up of all good men, with hats off, in reverence to one who never wielded a sword or delivered masterly ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... of heat, determines the condition in which all inorganic bodies exist. In most cases we can make any given element assume the form of a solid, a fluid, or a vapour, by the addition or subtraction of heat. Thus if a pound of ice at 32 degrees be exposed to heat, it will gradually melt—but the water produced will remain unchanged in temperature till the last particle of ice is melted—then it will begin ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... had suggested, I was taught only one letter a year for the first twenty-six years of my life, after which I took up addition, multiplication, short and long division and fractions. My father would not permit me to learn subtraction. ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... my four first sums—Addition, Multiplication, Division, and Subtraction;" and the learned ironmonger pointed to a pile of some hundreds of ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker

... does not desire that his readers should have any. The sadness of the book comes from his failure, or rather his constitutional inability, to see other people whole. After all, our appreciations for other people are of the nature of a sum. There is a certain amount of addition and subtraction to be done; the point is whether the sum total is to the credit of the person concerned. But with Mark Pattison the process of subtraction was more congenial than the process of addition. He saw and felt the weakness of those who surrounded him so keenly ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... bear the power of their formidable twelve-inch guns on the fortifications, with magnificent accuracy and with deadly effects. [Cheers.] When, as I have said, these proceedings are being conducted, so far as the navy is concerned, without subtraction of any sort or kind from the strength and effectiveness of the grand fleet, I think a word of congratulation is due to the Admiralty for the way in which it has utilized ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... for hours over the simplest kind of a problem in the whole arithmetic. Dorothea would occasionally bring her a piece of taffy. She would wrap it up, put it in her pocket, and give it the next day to a schoolmate from whose note book she had copied her sums in subtraction. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... temptation to get the high compliment and honor of such a vote was very strong indeed. But there were thirteen of our delegation of twenty-eight, who were willing to vote with me for Mr. Sherman. If I had consented to the subtraction of their votes from his column on the first ballot, it would have made a ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... instance, the ivory disks of various colors—which you see arranged upon the table as the pupils have left them—serve very successfully to elucidate the arithmetical processes of numeration, addition, and subtraction; and the more intelligent children are taught to observe that the disks of varying colors are varyingly numbered—white, 1; red, 5, and blue, 10—and so are encouraged to identify a concrete arbitrary figure ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier

... you—they would not talk to you as though they were at your stage of the journey, they could not exchange opinions with you, they could not share in your wild surmises, they could not sympathise with your hatred of addition, multiplication, and subtraction. The fellow victims at old Parlow's might have been expected to do these things, but they were too young, too uninterested, too unenterprising. One wanted real boys—boys with excitement and sympathy... ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... by the state, however, is not founded so much on any numerical estimate, as on the subtraction of the mechanical skill, intelligence, and general resources of an orderly, industrious population. In this view, the mischief was incalculably greater than that inferred by the mere number of the exiled; and, although even this might have ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... it seems a part, an exaggeration of some symptom of the general condition. Evidently he views stupor as a type of reaction: as a more or less complete suspension of the operation of intellectual faculties, a more or less sudden subtraction of nervous forces. This reaction can result from a fright or the memory of it, a brain lesion or trauma, the action of narcotics, exhausting fevers, excessive grief, the terrors of alcoholic hallucinations, epileptic seizures, profound anemia and nervous ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... be affirmed by some one that this subtraction leaves a remainder of four millions ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... apathy to politics which is often shown by the higher classes in a democracy, would have little power in times of excitement and peril, when the precaution was most needed. At such political crises, all the lower classes would vote equally with the higher. The subtraction of half the persons chosen at the first election by the chances of the lot would not raise the character of the senators, and is open to the objection of uncertainty, which necessarily attends this and similar ...
— Laws • Plato

... of gas that has been burned since the meter was set at zero on the three dials. From this number we subtract the total of feet burned at the time when the preceding gas bill was rendered. This is generally called on the bill "present state of meter." The result of the subtraction will be the amount of gas that has been burned since the last bill was ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... from Washington during these weeks was the answer given by Count Gurowski to the inquiry, "Is there anything in addition this morning?" "No," said Gurowski, "it is all in subtraction." ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam

... and took a girl who could neither read nor write, to make up for her alarm about the progress of education towards addition and subtraction; and afterwards, when the clergyman who was at Hanbury parish when I came there, had died, and the bishop had appointed another, and a younger man, in his stead, this was one of the points on which he and my lady did not agree. While good ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... result of a complete defeat of the central powers, but if on that assumption Germany loses Alsace-Lorraine and Posen, the loss would be made good by the incorporation of German Austria. The result of this in figures would be the subtraction of six million inhabitants and the addition of eight million others—a transaction which need not unduly alarm the British Jingo, and at the same time might render defeat less ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... to determine the alteration of elevation for firing up and down a slope. It is found that the alteration of the tangent elevation is almost insensible, but the quadrant elevation requires the addition or subtraction of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... than the amount of humus present. However, natural processes remove humus without our aid or attention while the gardener's task is to add organic matter. So there is a very understandable tendency to focus on addition, not subtraction. But, can we add too much? And if so, what ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... up, or otherwise found on board at the time of the Capture, making Oath, That the said Papers and Writings are brought and Delivered in as they were received or taken, without any Fraud, Addition, Subtraction or Embezilment. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... tangible bodies; we see a world where friction is abolished, where perpetual motion is no longer impossible; where two bodies may occupy the same space at the same time; where collisions and disruptions take place without loss of energy; where subtraction often means more—as when the poison of a substance is rendered more virulent by the removal of one or more atoms of one of the elements; and where addition often means less—as when three parts of the gases of oxygen and hydrogen unite and form only two parts of watery vapor; ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... this paragraph, after we have done our subtraction, sixty-four vowels and two hundred and twelve consonants. Good! that is the normal proportion. That is about a fifth, as in the alphabet, where there are six vowels among twenty-six letters. It is possible, therefore, that the document is written in the language of our country, and that ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... seems to be certain that most human beings suffer by the suppression or the dormancy of existing faculties. It is here, I believe, that much of our intellectual education fails, from the tendency to direct so much attention to purely logical and reasoning faculties, and to the resolute subtraction from education of pure and simple enjoyment. I used to try many experiments as a schoolmaster, and I remember at one time bribing a slow and unintelligent class into some sort of concentration by promising that I would tell a story for a few minutes at the end of school, if a bit ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... kind of a division," I shouted, all the while winking at Westy, "I can command a long division or a short division or a multiplication or a subtraction or ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... shall see, in the first, we have an addition direct of coloured lights producing white; in the latter, the green colour, appearing as the result of the mixture of the blue and yellow pigments, is obtained by the subtraction of colours; it is due to the absorption, by the blue and yellow pigments, of all the spectrum, practically, except the green portion. In the case of coloured objects, we are then confronted with the fact that these objects appear coloured because of an absorption ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... in the class-room. All eyes on the blackboard, and the quick fingers of one boy handling the crayon. How fast he worked! Had be multiplied right?—No. Yes, that was right. O, but he had blundered in subtraction! No, he had not; every figure was right. Ah! now he had reached the place where none of them knew what to do next. But he knew! Without pause or confusion, he moved on, through to the very last figure, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... investigation, which may furnish a commentary on the first. The chapters on Taxation deducted, there remain, therefore, seventeen in the second edition, or eighteen in the third. These contain the general principles, but also something more— which may furnish matter for a second subtraction. For, in most speculations of this nature it usually happens that, over and above the direct positive communication of new truths, a writer finds it expedient (or, perhaps, necessary in some cases, in ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... sat in my study considering the best means of reducing my staff of servants and in computing, with dismay, the cost of being a princely host to people who had not the least notion what it meant to do sums in economic subtraction. It was soon apparent to me that retrenchment, stern and relentless, would have to follow upon my wild though brief season of profligacy. I decided ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... for that," rejoined the Red Queen, sniffing, "try another subtraction sum! Take a Grand Old Leader from a 'Party' of discredited ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various

... travelling is not, for in some instances you may look over the wall upon another world below, as we are above the tops of the houses. Its being level is a circumstance highly favourable to the draught of carriages across it, and without any apparent subtraction from its beauty. We will alight here and walk leisurely across, taking time ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... minds the idea that religion is SUBTRACTION. It does not tell us to give things up, but rather gives us something so much better that they give themselves up. When you see a boy on the street whipping a top, you know, perhaps, that you could not make that boy happier than ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond

... cast in a finer mould, may not despise them utterly, nor too contemptuously misinterpret them. The legend that twins may share a single soul has always seemed to me grotesque and unpoetic nonsense, a cruel and unnecessary notion too: a man is sufficiently imperfect without suffering this further subtraction from his potentialities. And yet it is true, in our own case, that you have exclusive monopoly of the ethereal qualities, while to me are given chiefly the physical attributes of the vigorous and healthy male—the animal: my six feet three, my muscular system, my inartistic ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... out," is meant the subtraction of the bad eggs from the number to be paid for. Buying on a candled or graded basis, usually not only means rots cut, but that a variation of the price is made for two or ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... certain by-rules given him by his teacher, which were based on a careful study of the wording of the questions set by the inspector, and which held good as long as that wording remained unchanged. For example, if a subtraction sum was to be dictated to "Standard II," the child was taught that the number which was given out first was to be placed in the upper line, and that the number which came next was to be subtracted from this. He was not taught that the lesser ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... neutral ground, cursing both; is to be in a situation unwholesome for the mind, which time is not likely to improve. The worst class of sum worked in the every-day world is cyphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are always in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of others, and never in Addition ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... numbering, or computing by numbers, my dear. The four principal rules of arithmetic are addition, subtraction, ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley

... idea of you. No persons who have been in contact with it can be so absolutely blameless as you and Mary, nor can our relation together be rendered in the very smallest degree less or more a blessing by the addition or the subtraction of worldly wealth. I have abundant comfort now in the thought that at any rate I am the means of keeping a load off the minds of others; and I shall have much more hereafter when Stephen is brought through, and once more firmly planted in the place ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... distributing them among children or by sales in smaller units. Much of the land obtained by the first two generations on the Eastern Shore was broken up into small holdings by the third. As stated by Professor Ames, "It is the subtraction and division of acres, with only occasionally any marked addition, that seems to be the chief development in land tenure during the last quarter of the ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.

... stick at the mud. "But, I wonder, is it addition or subtraction? Is it two and one ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... general education was sadly neglected, and when he was thirteen practically ceased. These deficiencies were a source of mortification all his life. He spelled atrociously, was never sure of his addition and subtraction and so was often involved in altercations with landlords and washerwomen. By nature Beethoven was of strong, eager intellect. He became an omnivorous reader, and later in life acquired a working facility in ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... the voice of the officer in command is heard reproving some raw recruit whose vocal musket hung fire. Then the drill of the small infantry begins anew, but pauses again because some urchin—who agrees with Voltaire that the superfluous is a very necessary thing—insists on spelling "subtraction" ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... is still very poor. He is unable to do long division or multiplication, and cannot add together simple fractions. Addition he does much better, but even at his best he makes errors in columns where he has to add five numerals. He now can do simple subtraction such as is required in making change, but fails on such a problem as how much change he should get from $20 after buying goods costing $11.37. His memory span is only six numerals, and these he cannot ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... war changed in the work of the cavalryman is in the nature of an addition, rather than a subtraction from his duties and the training he must have. The day of cavalry—as cavalry and nothing else—has passed. For today the cavalryman must be familiar not only with the sword, lance and revolver, but with the rifle as well. It has been demonstrated that such long ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... lightning-like speed that he was unable to watch the wheels go round. The only thing of which he is conscious is the final result or sum at the bottom of the column called his "hunch." He is not aware of the addition and subtraction which his mind went through to get ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... an enrichment if in St. George's Chapel, the central shrine of British royalty, the sham insignia now overhanging the stalls of the knights of the garter were to give room to genuine armor. Not merely then by addition, but possibly, in some instances, by both subtraction and substitution, we may find the "Prayer-book as it ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... sentence of three words. The next, gentleman gave him the German word 'verloren' and said it was the third in a sentence of four words. He asked the next gentleman for one detail in a sum in addition; another for one detail in a sum of subtraction; others for single details in mathematical problems of various kinds; he got them. Intermediates gave him single words from sentences in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other languages, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... seasonable. The young gentlemen of the town wondered that Miss Faringfield had not made a better match (as she might have done, of course, in each one's secret opinion by choosing himself). The young ladies, though some of them may have regretted the subtraction of one eligible youth from their matrimonial chances, were all of them rejoiced at the removal of a rival who had hitherto kept the eyes of a score of youths, even more eligible, turned away from them. And so they wished her well, with smiles the most genuine. She valued not a finger-snap their thoughts ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... to the Black Boy, on this proposed arithmetical criticism, that the work required addition, subtraction, and division; that the fittest critic, on whose name, indeed, he had originally engaged in the work, was our Dr. Barnard; and he sent the package to the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... all over again, analyze it, paraphrase it ten times in succession, with the patience of a mother. And so their progress has been incomparably swifter and more astounding than that of old Hans. Within a fortnight of the first lesson Mohammed did simple little addition and subtraction sums quite correctly. He had learnt to distinguish the tens from the units, striking the latter with his right foot and the former with his left. He knew the meaning of the symbols plus and minus. Four days later, he ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... offence, and to liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole of history, or science, or philosophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts that fall within his vision? The world refuses to be analyzed by addition and subtraction. When we are young we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that in the course of a few years we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... exhalation is carried on by the innumerable minute capillary vessels in which the small arterial branches terminate in the air-cells. Pulmonary exhalation is, in fact, one of the chief outlets of waste matter from the system; and the air we breathe is thus vitiated, not only by the subtraction of its oxygen and the addition of carbonic acid gas, but also by animal effluvia, with which it is loaded when returned from the lungs. In some individuals this last source of impurity is so great as to render their vicinity offensive, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... old man. He had a heap of block-letters before him, and, as we came up, he pointed, without saying a word, to the arrangements he had made with them on the table. They were evidently anagrams, and had the merit of transposing the letters of the words employed without addition or subtraction. Here are a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... three shields against subtraction, detraction, and all the wrongs inventors endure: to wit, a choleric temper, a keen sense of humour, and a good wife. He storms and rages at his detracting pupils; but ends with roars of laughter at their impudence. I am told he still hopes to meet with justice some day, and to give ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... touch me. You go about bullying little boys, and calling yourself King Pewee, but you can't do a sum in long division, nor in short subtraction, for that matter, and you let fellows like Riley make a fool of you. Your father's poor, and your mother can't keep a girl, and you ought to be ashamed to let her milk the cows. Who milked your cow ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston

... 1. 10. i.e. Corrective Justice is wrought out by subtraction from the wrong doer and addition to the ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... then the gold, and finally the silver. Or, if that is too much trouble, reflect that on this modest couch recline bank-notes for three thousand one hundred and twenty pounds, gold sovereigns to the number of three hundred and forty-two, whence by an easy subtraction sum we obtain a remainder of silver, in value three pounds ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... our trade, multiplication to our manufactures, subtraction to taxes, and reduction to ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... to render it familiar, to impress it firmly in their recollection, and to enable them to work with rapidity. Now this object must be steadily pursued. It would be very unwise for the teacher to say to himself; my class are tired of addition, I must carry them on to subtraction, or give them some other study. It would be equally unwise, to keep them many days performing example after example, in monotonous succession, each lesson a mere repetition of the last. He must steadily pursue his object, of familiarizing them fully with ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... him a start in arithmetic," added Mr. Washington. "Hobby knows something of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. But a bright boy will run him dry in two or ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... p. 320.—Arithmetic, and numerical calculations of every kind, are wrought by what have been termed "the four simple Rules," viz. Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, and Division. They who are expert and accurate in working these, have only to learn the several rules by which they are applied to all the varied purposes of life, to be ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... open and guilty eyes, the lashes of which stuck into long black arrows from tears. Also, through a capricious turn of her mind, she began to master addition and multiplication with comparative ease, but subtraction and division were for her an impenetrable wall. But then, she could, with amazing speed and wit, solve all possible jocose oral head-breaking riddles, and even remembered very many of them herself from the thousand ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... hear, the mind think, add, and subtract, we need a seer, a hearer, a thinker. More than this I will not inflict on you to-day; but you see that without deviating a finger's breadth from the straight path of reason, that is from correct and honest addition and subtraction, we finally come to the soul-phantom and to the idea of God, which you look upon with such blood-thirstiness. I have indicated to you, with only a few strokes, the historical course of human knowledge. There still remains much to fill in, ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller

... water with the salt-water variety, all develop exactly alike, into the salt-water kind. Likewise, if the salt-water variety is developed in fresh water, it assumes all the characteristics of the fresh-water kind. Thus the addition or subtraction of a single chemical agent—common salt—makes all ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... At the end of that time he could read a little in the first primer. With difficulty he could make certain hieroglyphics which looked like his name. He could also perform simple sums in addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The mysteries ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... divers wayes: first by subtraction of fewell; if a man forbeare his accustomed meales, will not his naturall heat decay? The Levites that kept Gods watch in the Temple, were charged expressely, morning & evening, if not oftner, to ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward

... material injury to hulls, spars, etc., was yet more serious. The English squadron, by this concentration of the enemy upon a small fraction of it, was entirely crippled. Inferior when the action began, its inferiority was yet more decisive by the subtraction of two ships, and Suffren's ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... generous with the subtraction. She was in a generous mood, wanting to give everybody the benefit of the doubt that, with a good deal of a struggle, she had managed to give Georgia. Of course the vindicating of the little freshman was quite the happiest result ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... before the world it is not a little surprising that the assertions of a recent traveller, who, so far as the Gorilla is concerned, really does very little more than repeat, on his own authority, the statements of Savage and of Ford, should have met with so much and such bitter opposition. If subtraction be made of what was known before, the sum and substance of what M. Du Chaillu has affirmed as a matter of his own observation respecting the Gorilla, is, that, in advancing to the attack, the great brute beats his chest with his fists. I confess I see nothing very ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... indications of a general increase in the power to calculate, and in courage to face the labor. Here is a comparison of two different times. In the day of Cocker,[137] the pupil was directed to perform a common subtraction with a voice-accompaniment of this kind: '7 from 4 I cannot, but add 10, 7 from 14 remains 7, set down 7 and carry 1; 8 and 1 which I carry is 9, 9 from 2 I cannot, etc.' We have before us the announcement of the following table, undated, as open to inspection at the Crystal ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan



Words linked to "Subtraction" :   reduction, bite, arithmetic operation, step-down, diminution, decrease, subtract, addition, withholding



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