Accountable

How to spell accountable

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce accountable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does accountable mean?

1. adjectiveRequired or expected to justify one's actions and decisions; answerable to someone.

Accountable in a sentence

• Managers are accountable for every decision they make on the project.

• The new policy makes each department accountable for its own budget.

Where does accountable come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grows out of the verb 'account', which English took from the Old French 'aconter', meaning 'to reckon up' or 'to count'. That French verb traces back to the Latin 'computare', literally 'to reckon together' or 'to calculate', built from 'com-' (together) and 'putare' (to reckon or think). The financial sense of keeping accounts came first, and from the idea of having to render or explain one's accounts grew the moral sense of being answerable for one's conduct, recorded from around the 1500s. The adjective adds the Latin-derived suffix '-able', meaning 'liable to' or 'capable of', so an accountable person is literally someone who can be called to give a reckoning. The same 'computare' root sits inside the modern words 'compute' and 'count', which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the double 'c' of 'account' before the 'o'.

How the word is built

• ac- (to, from Latin ad-)
• count (reckon, from computare)
• -able (capable of, liable to)