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.
Bookkeeping fraud has a two-year statute of limitations as a misdemeanor and a five-year one as a felony, both of which would normally have expired for payments made to Mr. Cohen in 2017.
From New York Times • Mar. 19, 2023
She started her own business in 2007, DaiNell Bookkeeping and Consulting, becoming self-employed to work from home and take care of her kids.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 29, 2022
“I asked you in, Featherstone, because I had a sudden desire to reach out to the Bookkeeping Department,” one such executive says to a befuddled employee standing before his desk in shirt sleeves.
From New York Times • Nov. 2, 2016
Some of them: Underwood Bookkeeping Machines combined the typing of records and mechanical calculating of accounts by a minimum number of processes.
From Time Magazine Archive
Bookkeeping turns everything into a notional cash value, even though you do not actually know if you will ever sell it or what you will get for it if you do.
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.
