on one's own account

Idioms  

1. Also,. For oneself; also, by one's own efforts, as in I've gone into business on my own account, or He called the police on his own hook, or She went job-hunting on her own initiative. The first term, first recorded in 1801, transfers the financial sense of account to one's own interest or risk. The hook variant, a colloquialism, was first recorded in 1812 and the precise analogy is unclear. The second variant, using initiative in the sense of “enterprise,” was first recorded in 1858.

---

Example Sentences

That this repugnance to navigate on one's own account will be further followed by the desertion of a great number of sailors, who for want of finding employment here, and tempted by the advantageous promises of the enemy, will go there in search of service, to the double detriment of the public interest of the Republic.

From Project Gutenberg

And one can better ask a favour for one's friend than for one's-self, you know: for when one wants to borrow money on one's own account, there are so many little delicacies to get the better of—such as I felt just now.—I was as pale as death, I dare say, when I asked you for this money—did not you perceive I was?

From Project Gutenberg

The former consists in the price paid by the borrower for the use of the factor of production to the owner; the latter in the immediate products which the employment of the same productive power brings on one's own account.

From Project Gutenberg

One may be interested by the reminder that Oliver Cromwell quoted two verses from the hundred and seventeenth Psalm after his victory at Dunbar; but one may remember on one's own account that David Leslie, the defeated Scots general, was as devout a Christian and Bible-reader as Oliver Cromwell, and that his piety was stimulated by the presence in his camp of a whole congregation of Presbyterian ministers.

From Project Gutenberg

They knew him, they liked him, but—well, at the back of their minds was the thought that if Dr Wulf could make a mistake in one case, there was no knowing but what he might in another,—that he might at any time come in tired and pick up the wrong bottle,—that, whatever risks one might accept on one's own account for old friendship's sake, one's wife and daughters should hardly be put into such a position all unknown to themselves.

From Project Gutenberg