bankrupt
Americannoun
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Law. a person who upon their own petition or that of their creditors is adjudged insolvent by a court and whose property is administered for and divided among their creditors under a bankruptcy law.
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any insolvent debtor; a person unable to satisfy any just claims made upon them.
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a person who is lacking in a particular thing or quality.
a moral bankrupt.
adjective
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Law. subject to or under legal process because of insolvency; insolvent.
- Synonyms:
- impoverished, destitute
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at the end of one's resources; lacking (usually followed by of orin ).
bankrupt of compassion;
bankrupt in good manners.
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related to the act or process of being adjudged insolvent by a court and having one's property andministered for and divided among one's creditors.
verb (used with object)
noun
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a person adjudged insolvent by a court, his or her property being transferred to a trustee and administered for the benefit of his creditors
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any person unable to discharge all his or her debts
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a person whose resources in a certain field are exhausted or nonexistent
a spiritual bankrupt
adjective
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adjudged insolvent
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financially ruined
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depleted in resources or having completely failed
spiritually bankrupt
-
(foll by of) lacking
bankrupt of intelligence
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bankruptsimple
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bankruptssimple
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have bankruptedperfect
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has bankruptedperfect
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am bankruptingprogressive
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are bankruptingprogressive
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is bankruptingprogressive
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have been bankruptingperfect progressive
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has been bankruptingperfect progressive
Past
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bankruptedsimple
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had bankruptedperfect
-
was bankruptingprogressive
-
were bankruptingprogressive
-
had been bankruptingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bankrupt
First recorded in 1525–35; from Medieval Latin banca rupta “bank broken”; replacing adaptations of Italian banca rota and French banqueroute in same sense
Explanation
You might not have any money in your pocket, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you are bankrupt. It takes a legal proceeding for the courts to declare a person bankrupt — or officially unable to pay his debts. Despite the word bank in bankrupt, the word can be used to describe an entity that is short of something other than money. A bankrupt nation might not have the natural resources for its people to produce goods. A nearby country that could easily help but chooses not to may be considered morally bankrupt because of its lack of compassion. Or, maybe there is more to the story. That nation might fear that helping another will bankrupt its own shaky economy. (That is how bankrupt can be used as a verb.)
Vocabulary lists containing bankrupt
Figurative Language in King's "I Have a Dream" Speech (1963)
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Make a Break for It: Rupt
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The Great Depression and The New Deal
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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:
“Pretending we may never need care is naive at best and can bankrupt your entire family if you don’t have a plan,” wrote Mim Senft.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 2026
“So the taxpayers of the United States subsidized the creation of this new property to help bankrupt another federally subsidized property,” he said.
From Salon ● Jul. 4, 2026
And several EV startups have aimed for the sky only to fall short: Just look at electric-truck makers Nikola and Fisker, which went bankrupt in 2024.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 24, 2026
About half of the 1999 IPO class went bankrupt by 2001, including one-time big names such as Webvan and EToys.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 23, 2026
In the subsequent flight to safety, the early subprime lenders were denied capital and promptly went bankrupt en masse.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the authors write, tried to ensure that only “honest but unfortunate” debtors benefited from bankruptcy’s by directing “professional bankrupts . . . to restitution or jail.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026
"If the company fails… it will fail because of an advertiser boycott. And that will be what bankrupts the company." he said.
From BBC ● Dec. 2, 2023
“If it so happens that it bankrupts or puts these individuals and entities in financial peril, so be it.”
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 14, 2021
The fight almost bankrupts the rural town of Shelby, Mont., which borrows heavily to stage it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 4, 2020
"Take me away from here," she said, "you bankrupts."
From "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway
The First Punic War spanned 23 years and nearly bankrupted both sides.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 11, 2026
The cases are ongoing, with plaintiffs also filing claims against the trusts of companies bankrupted by the litigation.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 29, 2026
While her husband and his ministers bankrupted France, she played at the simple life.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
The medical bills nearly bankrupted her family, so her older sister moved to Australia to support them.
From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2025
It was how she spent her time, buying up as many folks as she could, and rumor was she damn near bankrupted her and the major doing it.
From "Dread Nation" by Justina Ireland
The center filed lawsuits aimed at bankrupting Klan organizations, unsympathetic defendants that made easy targets.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026
Perhaps most evil are the acquisitions of hospitals for the sole purpose of bankrupting them and selling off assets to line someone else’s pockets.
From MarketWatch ● Jan. 26, 2026
If successful, Energy Transfer’s $300 million lawsuit may end up bankrupting the advocacy group as a whole, both domestically and internationally.
From Slate ● Feb. 26, 2025
The estimated bill for housing children in one local authority area has more than doubled in three years to £16m, one senior manager told the BBC, which risks bankrupting the council.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2024
Leonardo is now in Rome, where a new pope from the Medici family—Pope Leo X—is busy bankrupting the Vatican by commissioning massive new works of art.
From "The Mona Lisa Vanishes" by Nicholas Day
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.
