Account

How to spell account

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce account

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does account mean?

1. nounA record of money held, owed, or transacted, such as one kept at a bank.
2. nounA spoken or written description of events or experiences.
3. verbTo explain, justify, or make up a part of something, usually followed by 'for'.

Account in a sentence

• noun

  She transferred the rent from her savings account on the first of the month.

• noun

  The witness gave a detailed account of what happened at the junction.

• verb

  The manager could not account for the missing stock in the warehouse.

• noun

  The company opened a business account to keep its finances separate.

• noun

  Her travel blog offers a vivid account of the trek through the mountains.

• verb

  Travel costs account for most of the project budget.

Where does account come from?

Language of origin: French

This word reached English in the 1300s from the Old French aconter, meaning 'to reckon up' or 'to count', which was formed from the prefix a- (from the Latin ad-, meaning 'to' or 'toward') and conter, 'to count', itself from the Latin computare, 'to calculate or reckon together'. The earliest English uses were strictly about counting money and reckoning sums, which is why a bank record is still an 'account' today. From the literal idea of totting up figures, the sense broadened: to give an account of something came to mean rendering a reckoning in words, hence a spoken or written report. The same computare root also gives us 'compute' and, by a long French detour, 'count' itself. The double c in the spelling preserves the assimilated Latin prefix ad- becoming ac- before the c of count, a clue worth remembering when the urge to write a single c strikes.

How the word is built

• ac- (to, from Latin ad-)
• count (to reckon or compute, from Latin computare)