Budgetary

How to spell budgetary

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce budgetary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does budgetary mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a budget or to the planning and control of money.

Budgetary in a sentence

• The new software flagged every budgetary overrun in the department.

• Strict budgetary controls forced the team to cancel two projects.

Where does budgetary come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grows out of 'budget', which began life as the Old French 'bougette', a diminutive of 'bouge' meaning a small leather bag or pouch, itself from the Latin 'bulga' for a leather sack. In early English a budget was literally a wallet or pouch and its contents, and the modern financial sense arose because the English Chancellor of the Exchequer was said to 'open the budget', that is, open the bag of papers laying out the nation's accounts. From the noun 'budget' English built the adjective 'budgetary' in the nineteenth century by adding the Latin-derived suffix '-ary', meaning 'relating to', so the word simply means 'concerning a budget'. The spelling trap lives in that ending: although it sounds like a vague '-etree' or '-uh-tary', it is spelled '-etary', preserving the full 'budget' inside it. Remembering that 'budgetary' is just 'budget' plus '-ary' keeps the silent-sounding middle letters in place.

How the word is built

• budget (from Old French bougette: small leather bag)
• -ary (adjective suffix: relating to)