Meaning of sum: primarily denotes money; context may treat it as the total of amounts or a summary. The primary legal sense of the word sum is a quantity of money, ordinarily read as denoting a monetary amount unless context indicates otherwise. Dictionaries and legal lexicons treat sum as referring to money; however, as a verb it can mean the total resulting from addition, and in some English-law usage it may mean a summary or abstract, so grammatical role and contextual indicators determine the applicable sense.