Liabilities

How to spell liabilities

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce liabilities

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does liabilities mean?

1. nounThe debts and financial obligations that a person or organisation owes.
2. nounPeople or things that cause a disadvantage, risk, or burden.

Liabilities in a sentence

• The balance sheet lists all assets and liabilities in two columns.

• His frequent absences became serious liabilities for the small team.

• The company reduced its liabilities by paying off several loans early.

• The manager weighed each new hire's strengths against potential liabilities.

Where does liabilities come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb ligare, meaning 'to bind' or 'to tie', the same root that gives us 'ligament' and 'oblige'. From this came the English adjective 'liable', which originally meant 'bound or obligated by law', the idea being that you are tied to a duty or a debt. Adding the noun-forming suffix '-ity' produced 'liability', a state of being legally bound or answerable, recorded from the early 1600s. By the nineteenth century accountants had narrowed one sense to mean the debts a person or business owes, the opposite of assets. The plural 'liabilities' keeps that double life today, covering both formal debts and any person or thing that is a burden; the tricky spelling comes from the soft '-bil-' middle and the '-ities' ending, which together swallow several unstressed vowels.

How the word is built

• li- (from Latin ligare: to bind)
• -able (capable of)
• -ity (state/quality)
• -es (plural)