Bill

How to spell bill

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bill

What does bill mean?

1. nounA written statement of the money owed for goods or services.
2. nounA draft of a proposed law presented to a legislature for debate.
3. nounThe horny projecting jaws of a bird; its beak.
4. nounA piece of paper money of a stated value.

Bill in a sentence

• The restaurant bill came to forty pounds after the tip.

• The bill passed its second reading in the lower house.

• The duck tucked its bill under one wing to sleep.

• He handed the cashier a twenty dollar bill for the groceries.

• She paid the electricity bill online before the deadline.

• Parliament debated the new immigration bill for hours.

Where does bill come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The spelling 'bill' covers several words that fell together over time. The sense of a written statement of charges comes from the Latin bulla, which literally meant 'a bubble' and then 'a rounded seal or knob' attached to an official document; through Anglo-Latin and Old French this came to mean the sealed document itself, and English adopted it around the 1400s for any formal written note, including a demand for payment and a draft law put before parliament. The bird's-beak sense is entirely separate and native: it descends from the Old English 'bile', a word of Germanic origin for the horny jaw of a bird. The American sense of a banknote grew out of the documentary meaning, since a paper note was originally a written promise. Because all these roots happen to land on the same four letters, 'bill' became one tidy spelling carrying very different ideas.

How the word is built

• bill (a single, unanalysable root; the various meanings come from separate Old English and Latin sources that converged on the same spelling)