Debit

How to spell debit

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce debit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does debit mean?

1. nounAn entry in an account recording a sum that is owed or has been deducted.
2. verbTo charge or deduct a sum from an account.

Debit in a sentence

• noun

  The bank statement listed a debit for the monthly subscription.

• verb

  The utility company will debit your account on the first of each month.

• noun

  Every debit on the ledger must be matched by a corresponding credit.

• verb

  The accountant agreed to debit the expense to the travel budget.

Where does debit come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin debitum, meaning 'a thing that is owed', which was the past participle of the verb debere, 'to owe'. That verb was itself a compression of de (away from) and habere (to have), so the original idea was literally 'to have something away from you', that is, to hold money that belongs to another. English took the word in during the fifteenth century, first in the world of bookkeeping where a debit recorded a sum owed or charged against an account. The same Latin debitum sits behind the everyday word 'debt', whose silent 'b' was added by scholars to flag the Latin root; debit keeps that 'b' but pronounces it, which is a useful reminder that the two words are relatives. Knowing the link to 'debt' also fixes the spelling, since debit is simply 'deb' plus 'it', with no doubled letters and no tricky vowels.

How the word is built

• deb- (from debere: to owe)
• -it (from Latin debitum: thing owed)