Audit

How to spell audit

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce audit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does audit mean?

1. nounAn official examination of financial accounts or records to check their accuracy.
2. verbTo conduct an official examination of accounts, records, or processes.
3. verbTo attend a course as a listener, without taking it for formal credit or a grade.

Audit in a sentence

• noun

  The company faces a full audit of its expenses next month.

• verb

  External accountants will audit our books before the annual report.

• verb

  She decided to audit the history lecture purely out of interest.

• noun

  The tax office ordered an audit after the figures looked irregular.

• verb

  The agency plans to audit every department for wasted spending.

• verb

  Retired staff may audit any class on campus free of charge.

Where does audit come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb audire, which simply meant 'to hear', the same root that gives us 'audible', 'audience' and 'auditorium'. The specific form audit comes from auditus, a noun meaning 'a hearing', and the practice it names is delightfully literal: in medieval times, financial accounts were checked by having them read out loud to an official who listened for errors, so an account was literally 'heard'. English took the word in the 1400s to mean a formal examination of accounts, and it kept the spelling of its Latin parent almost untouched. Because the trap in the spelling is the unstressed second syllable, it helps to remember that the 'aud' really does mean 'hear', linking it firmly to audio. The sense later widened from money to any thorough, methodical inspection.

How the word is built

• aud- (from Latin audire: to hear)
• -it (from the Latin third-person verb form, literally 'he hears')