Inventory

How to spell inventory

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce inventory

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inventory mean?

1. nounA complete itemised list of the goods, stock, or property held by a business or person.
2. verbTo make a complete list of the items held in a place.

Inventory in a sentence

• noun

  The warehouse staff counted the entire inventory before the annual audit.

• verb

  The manager asked the team to inventory every item on the shelves by Friday.

• noun

  A low inventory of spare parts delayed the repair for several weeks.

• verb

  Volunteers helped inventory the donated supplies before the shop reopened.

Where does inventory come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Medieval Latin inventarium, a written list of things found, which was built on the Latin verb invenire, meaning 'to come upon' or 'to find'. That verb combines the prefix in- ('upon') with venire ('to come'), so an inventory was literally a record of what one came upon when taking stock. English adopted it in the early fifteenth century, partly through the Old French inventoire, and applied it to itemised lists of goods and possessions. The same venire root surfaces in a crowd of familiar relatives, including 'invent', 'event', 'venue', and 'adventure', all sharing the idea of coming or arriving. Remembering that hidden 'vent' (to come) can help fix the middle of the word, since the easily slurred '-ven-tor-y' is where the spelling tends to go astray.

How the word is built

• in- (upon, into)
• vent (from Latin venire: to come)
• -ory (noun suffix: a place or collection of)