Billing

How to spell billing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce billing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does billing mean?

1. nounThe process of preparing and sending statements of charges to customers.
2. nounThe relative prominence given to a performer's name on a poster, programme, or advertisement.

Billing in a sentence

• The company moved its billing system online to speed up payments.

• The veteran actor demanded top billing above the younger cast.

• A mistake in the billing department led to several duplicate charges.

• Both stars received equal billing on the cinema poster.

Where does billing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The core word 'bill' came into English in the 1300s from Anglo-French bille, itself from Medieval Latin bulla, which first meant a seal or a sealed document, the literal sense being a rounded knob or bubble of wax pressed onto an official paper. Over time bulla shifted from the seal itself to the document it authenticated, and English speakers borrowed it as a word for any formal written statement, including a list of charges or an account to be paid. The form 'billing' simply adds the suffix '-ing', producing a noun for the whole activity of preparing and issuing such accounts. The same bulla also gave us the 'bull' of a papal bull, a sealed decree, which surprises many people given how ordinary a billing statement feels today. Because the word is built transparently from a familiar root plus a common suffix, its spelling rarely strays, though the single 'l' before the doubled 'l' pattern can momentarily trip writers.

How the word is built

• bill (written statement of charges)
• -ing (noun/gerund suffix)