bottom line

noun

1. the last line of a financial statement, used for showing net profit or loss.

2. net profit or loss.

3. the deciding or crucial factor.

4. the ultimate result; outcome.

bottom line

noun

1. the last line of a financial statement that shows the net profit or loss of a company or organization

2. the final outcome of a process, discussion, etc

3. the most important or fundamental aspect of a situation

bottom line

1. The last line in an audit, which shows profit or loss.

“Bottom line” also has a derogatory implication when it refers to those people whose attention to the bottom line prevents them from recognizing the value of anything else.

By extension, “bottom line” refers to the final, determining consideration in a decision.

Other Word Forms

• bottom-line adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of bottom line¹

First recorded in 1965–70

Idioms and Phrases

The ultimate result, the upshot; also, the main point or crucial factor. For example, The bottom line is that the chairman wants to dictate all of the board's decisions, or Whether or not he obeyed the law is the bottom line. This is an accounting term that refers to the earnings figures that appear on the bottom (last) line of a statement. It began to be transferred to other contexts in the mid-1900s.

Example Sentences

But they also seem heartfelt rather than calculated or driven by the corporate bottom line.

Read more on Salon

A number of things could be at play in companies’ increasing comfort with layoffs, including optimism over artificial intelligence, but they all come down to the bottom line.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

“You can get into semantics,” he said, “but the bottom line is whether the department used all of the tools available to put the Jan. 1 fire out. And it did not.”

Read more on Los Angeles Times

The contract generates more than $20 billion of revenue a year for Apple, nearly all of which falls to the bottom line, accounting for roughly a fifth of the company’s operating profit, analysts estimate.

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Those remarks overshadowed both a record quarterly revenue tally of $51.2 billion and a $16 billion tax hit that ate into the group’s bottom line.

Read more on Barron's

Related Words

• cardinal 
• critical 
• crucial 
• essential 
• fundamental 
• important 
• indispensable