bookkeeping
Americannoun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of bookkeeping
Explanation
Bookkeeping is keeping track of a business's financial transactions. Most bookkeeping these days happens on computers rather than in actual books. The activity of keeping your own financial records and the job of doing the same thing for a company are both considered bookkeeping. Some people teach themselves basic bookkeeping and others hire experts to do it for them. The word bookkeeping comes from the sense of book that means "record" or "written document," and it has the distinction of being one of very few words in English with three consecutive double letters.
Vocabulary lists containing bookkeeping
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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.
There’s not a textbook for empathy the way there is for Python or for bookkeeping.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 11, 2026
Automation had been hollowing out middle-skill work since the early 2000s, quietly eliminating the clerical roles, bookkeeping jobs and sales positions that once absorbed India's graduates.
From BBC ● Mar. 29, 2026
Amanda said she is picking up whatever work she can, including hospital administrative duties and bookkeeping gigs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 23, 2026
Their statement also stresses that they effectively opened up their entire bookkeeping system to the Premier League for the purposes of the investigation.
From BBC ● Mar. 16, 2026
Double-entry bookkeeping thus represents an attempt to make the real world, the world of bolts of silk, bales of wool and bags of sugar, mathematically legible.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
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.
