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  1. The amount of water consumed in agriculture was 400 billion cubic meters in India in 2010.
  2. In 2010, water consumption for agricultural use in India amounted to 400 billion cubic meters.

I think amount to is used properly in sentence 2, and it seems that I can always paraphrase the amount of something is with amount to.

However, I'm afraid that the amount to structure might carry some specific nuance that is hidden to non-native speakers like me, which makes it different from the the amount of structure. So, can I use the two structures interchangeably?

P.S. I felt that there might be a difference because "amounts to" makes the total amount sound big to me. So maybe we don't use "amount to" when the amount is small or not impressive?

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    Dictionaries give the definintion. It is not "equals" but "becomes an amount" or "totals up to", or "reaches the level of" Commented Jul 10 at 5:38
  • Oh yeah I should have included that in my question. I felt that there might be a difference because "amounts to" makes the total amount sound big to me. So maybe we don't use "amount to" when the amount is small or not impressive? Commented Jul 10 at 6:45
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    "Amounts to" is sometimes used in a non-numerical context, such as "intimidating an opponent amounts to cheating". Commented Jul 10 at 8:01
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    Frame challenge: When you have "consumed" and a numerical measure there is no need for "amounted to". consumption amounted to and the amount consumed are verbose. Agriculture in India consumed 400 billion cubic meters of water in 2010. 400 billion cubic meters of water were consumed by Indian agriculture in 2010. You can move the year to the front if the sentence appears in a paragraph that is comparing consumption by year. Commented Jul 10 at 12:09
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    "The amount of X is Y" can be rewritten "X amounts to Y". But the opposite is not true, as "amounts to" also means "is equivalent to" and can be used with Y being something much different from an amount. See examples at en.wiktionary.org/wiki/amount#Verb sense 2: "He was a pretty good student, but never amounted to much professionally." or "His response amounted to gross insubordination." Commented Jul 10 at 16:31

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  • "Amount" is a verb, used in various tenses.

  • "An amount" is a fixed quantity of something that has been assessed, counted, or totalled.

There's no issue with using either of these to say what you want to say, so both your examples 1 and 2 are fine. But I prefer example 2 for a couple of reasons.

It is arguably best to state the amount at the end of the sentence, after you have fully qualified the scope, but example 1 uses a lot of prepositional phrases to do this - ie "in India", "in agriculture" and "in 2010". To string them all together at the start of the sentence could sound a bit clunky, but as it is, it feels a bit weird to state the amount within a certain scope (in agriculture), but then continue to reduce it (but only in India, and in 2010).

Example 2 reduces the number of prepositional phrases by grouping 2 of them together into a noun phrase - "water consumption for agricultural use" - and then gives the total at the end.

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While "amounts to" is often used in numerical contexts such as the example given in the question, it is not only used in numerical contexts.

The definition in Cambridge Dictionary gives two meanings

  1. to become a particular amount
  2. to be the same or have the same effect as something

The second meaning often applies in non-numerical contexts. An example which applies in some games is Intimidating an opponent amounts to cheating. Other examples are given in the cited dictionary page.

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Your example already shows that you usually can't replace "X amounts to Y" with "The amount of X is Y", because X is not the same in your two example sentences.

In "the amount of X is Y", X merely needs to be something that has a quantity, such as "water consumed". But for "X amounts to Y" to work, you need to replace X by something that is a quantity, such as "water consumption".

However, this indicates why you probably shouldn't use "amounts to" in numerical contexts like this. Since "water consumption" in this context already means "the amount of water consumed", the second sentence is redundantly saying that this amount amounts to [something]. Better would be simply

In 2010, water consumption for agricultural use in India was 400 billion cubic meters.

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