quantify
Americanverb (used with object)
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quantifies,
present (3rd person singular)
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quantified,
past participle, past
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quantifying
present participle
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to determine, indicate, or express the quantity of.
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Logic. to make explicit the quantity of (a proposition).
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to give quantity to (something regarded as having only quality).
verb
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to discover or express the quantity of
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logic to specify the quantity of (a term) by using a quantifier, such as all, some, or no
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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quantifysimple
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quantifiessimple
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have quantifiedperfect
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has quantifiedperfect
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am quantifyingprogressive
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are quantifyingprogressive
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is quantifyingprogressive
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have been quantifyingperfect progressive
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has been quantifyingperfect progressive
Past
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quantifiedsimple
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had quantifiedperfect
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was quantifyingprogressive
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were quantifyingprogressive
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had been quantifyingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of quantify
First recorded in 1830–40; from Medieval Latin quantificāre, equivalent to Latin quant(us) “how much” + -ificāre -ify
Compare meaning
How does quantify compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
When you quantify something, you're putting it in numbers. If you're asked to quantify the fingers on your hand, you better say five. If you like math, this word is for you: quantifying is counting or expressing something in numbers. Oddly enough quantify often comes into play when people are trying to count things that can't really be counted. When a doctor asks you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, he's asking you to quantify for your pain. Michael Jordan won 6 NBA championships, but you can't quantify what made him great: his drive and determination.
Vocabulary lists containing quantify
This Week In Culture: September 5–11, 2020
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This Week In Culture: Current Events Vocab for October 31–November 6, 2020
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"Simon's Saga," Vocabulary from Episode 35
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
To quantify its total addressable market, Anthropic is looking at the full scope of work that could be completed with artificial intelligence.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
“There is no hard information Mr. Jassy or anybody else has to quantify a market that didn’t even exist three years ago,” Luria said.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 17, 2026
In terms of fielding performance by the team, it is hard to quantify other than via the percentage of dropped catches - though Stokes' teams famously hunted down even lost causes to the boundary.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
The EPA is continuing to fully quantify and consider the compliance costs for affected industries, even though those costs are subject to many of the same uncertainties as the benefits.
From Slate ● Aug. 2, 2026
The pistol was more useful, but the cane brought Kaz a relief he didn’t care to quantify.
From "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo
“She quantifies her work to the voters as her primary reelection strategy,” Dutson said.
From Slate ● Jun. 16, 2026
But a new report from the Washington Post quantifies what many people have sensed: Trump’s use of profanity, insults and combative language has grown much worse since his return to power in January 2025.
From Salon ● May 26, 2026
About the author: Isaac Stone Fish is the CEO and founder of Strategy Risks, a firm that quantifies corporate exposure to China.
From Barron's ● Jan. 7, 2026
But how Riley quantifies that production remains unclear.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 19, 2024
Likewise, the logician would argue, You only live once should be rewritten as You live only once, with only next to the thing it quantifies, once.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
So far this earnings season, 11% of S&P 500 companies quantified the impact of AI productivity on a specific use case, such as coding or customer support, Goldman notes.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 17, 2026
How much would actually have been paid back to Fifa as an "annual license payment" referred to in a flow diagram in the charts, but not quantified?
From BBC ● Aug. 1, 2026
Passive-income endeavors aren’t quantified on their own in government labor statistics.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
Braves management hasn’t quantified the impact of the tax hit.
From Barron's ● Apr. 23, 2026
The correlation between expectation and delivery of desire could no doubt be quantified into some kind of mathematical formula.
From "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan
To call his latest film a contemporary masterwork would be true, but there’s also no quantifying the magic McElwee conjures here, no comparing it to anything else.
From Salon ● Jul. 24, 2026
The surest sign of market dislocation is when banks start quantifying their exposure to a given issue.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 24, 2026
One particular challenge in these cases is quantifying compensation for people who received no mental-health treatment at all, said lawyer Steve Cohen, who represents several plaintiffs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 26, 2025
This is the first direct evidence quantifying how much Antarctica's climate has cooled since that ancient warm period.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 5, 2025
Donders’s writing at the time shows an ebullient quality, such as when he describes the challenges of quantifying mental processing.
From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
