Deductible

How to spell deductible

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce deductible

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does deductible mean?

1. adjectiveAble to be subtracted from an amount, especially from taxable income or a total bill.
2. nounThe fixed amount an insured person must pay toward a claim before the insurer covers the rest.

Deductible in a sentence

• adjective

  Travel costs for the conference are fully deductible against her tax bill.

• noun

  The repair cost less than the deductible, so she paid for it herself.

• adjective

  The accountant confirmed that charitable donations remain deductible this year.

• noun

  Choosing a higher deductible lowered his monthly premium.

Where does deductible come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb deducere, which literally meant 'to lead down' or 'to lead away', formed from de- meaning 'from' or 'down' and ducere meaning 'to lead'. The same ducere root surfaces in a whole family of English words, including conduct, induce, produce, and aqueduct, all of which carry a buried sense of leading or drawing along. By the time the idea reached accounting and law, 'deducting' had come to mean drawing an amount away from a larger total. English added the suffix -ible, meaning 'able to be', to form 'deductible', describing something that can be subtracted, and the adjective settled into financial and tax language from around the seventeenth century onward. The noun sense, the fixed amount an insured person pays before cover begins, grew up later in the insurance trade, especially in North America. The spelling trap is the ending: it takes -ible, not -able, because the word descends from a Latin verb stem, and the central -duct- echoes 'duct' rather than 'deduce'.

How the word is built

• de- (from, away)
• duct (from Latin ducere, to lead)
• -ible (able to be)