Accountability

How to spell accountability

14 letters · 6 syllables

How to pronounce accountability

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does accountability mean?

1. nounThe condition of being responsible for one's actions and required to explain or justify them.

Accountability in a sentence

• The new policy demands greater accountability from senior managers.

• Voters want more accountability in how public money is spent.

Where does accountability come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on the noun 'account', which English took from the Old French 'aconter', meaning 'to reckon' or 'to count up'. That French verb in turn traces back to the Latin 'computare', formed from 'com-' (together) and 'putare' (to reckon or think), the very same root that gives us 'compute' and 'count'. By the Middle Ages an 'account' was a reckoning of money owed, and to be held to one's account was to be answerable for those figures. The adjective 'accountable', meaning liable to be called to give a reckoning, appears in English by the 1500s, and the abstract noun 'accountability', the state of being answerable, follows later, becoming common in the 1700s and especially in modern administrative and political language. The spelling trap is the long, fully spelled chain of suffixes: the double 'c', the silent reckoning root '-count-', and the smooth '-ability' tail that adults tend to compress when writing quickly.

How the word is built

• ac- (variant of ad-: to)
• count (from computare: to reckon, calculate)
• -abil- (capable of)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix)