Accountant

How to spell accountant

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce accountant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does accountant mean?

1. nounA person whose job is to keep, inspect, or interpret financial records and accounts.

Accountant in a sentence

• Our accountant filed the company tax return before the deadline.

• She hired an accountant to sort out her freelance income.

Where does accountant come from?

Language of origin: French

The word traces back to the Latin verb computare, meaning 'to reckon up' or 'to calculate', formed from com- ('together') and putare ('to think, to settle a reckoning'). This passed into Old French as aconter or acompter, 'to count or render a reckoning', and the present participle acomptant described a person engaged in counting. English adopted 'account' as both noun and verb in the medieval period, and by the late 1400s 'accountant' had settled as the name for the official who keeps and audits the reckonings. The same computare root sits inside everyday relatives like 'compute', 'count', and 'discount', which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the double c followed by 'count'. The trap for writers is hearing one c sound where two letters are actually written, plus the unstressed -ant ending that can be mistaken for -ent.

How the word is built

• ac- (from Latin ad-: to)
• count (to reckon, from computare: to calculate)
• -ant (agent suffix: one who does)