From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishsubtractionsub‧trac‧tion /səbˈtrækʃən/ noun [countable] HMthe process of taking a number or amount from a larger number or amount → addition
Examples from the Corpus
subtraction• The purpose is to reinforce the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.• It makes perfect sense, simple addition and subtraction, but no one figured the tracking speed into the equation.• However some important operations may take us outside the realm of the natural numbers-the simplest being subtraction.• As he remarks, this is what we do in arithmetic when we check additions by subtraction, and viceversa.• But the second cat ran away, an early lesson in subtraction for Jack.• Whether they all cancel out to give a theory that is finite without any infinite subtractions is not yet known.• This, again, aids the process of mental subtraction.• Surviving examples of his newsletters show that they were often produced in multiple copies, with additions or subtractions as appropriate. 