Bankrupt

How to spell bankrupt

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bankrupt

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bankrupt mean?

1. adjectiveDeclared in law to be unable to pay one's debts; financially ruined.
2. nounA person who has been legally declared insolvent and unable to pay their debts.
3. verbTo reduce someone or something to a state of financial ruin.

Bankrupt in a sentence

• adjective

  The airline went bankrupt after two years of mounting losses.

• noun

  As an undischarged bankrupt, he was barred from running a company.

• verb

  A single failed investment could bankrupt the entire firm.

• adjective

  Three high street retailers were declared bankrupt during the recession.

• noun

  The court ordered the bankrupt to surrender all remaining assets.

• verb

  Reckless spending threatened to bankrupt the local council.

Where does bankrupt come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word comes from the Italian phrase banca rotta, which literally meant 'broken bench'. In medieval Italian trading towns, moneylenders and merchants conducted their business at benches or counters (banca) set up in the marketplace, and when a trader could no longer pay his debts his bench was reportedly broken to signal that he was finished trading. The second element traces back to the Latin rumpere, 'to break', whose past participle ruptus also gives us familiar relatives like 'rupture', 'erupt', and 'interrupt'. English took the word in during the mid 1500s, and its spelling drifted toward the Latin form, ending in -rupt rather than the Italian -rotta. Knowing that the ending is the same 'broken' root found in rupture helps fix the -rupt spelling rather than a tempting -rrupt or -rript.

How the word is built

• bank- (from Italian banca: a moneylender's bench or counter)
• -rupt (from Latin ruptus: broken)