account

• (US) IPA^(key): /ə.ˈkaʊnt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊnt
• Hyphenation: ac‧count

From Middle English, from Anglo-Norman acunte (“account”), from Old French aconte, from aconter (“to reckon”), from Latin computō (“to sum up”).

account (plural accounts)

1. (accounting) A registry of pecuniary transactions; a written or printed statement of business dealings or debts and credits, and also of other things subjected to a reckoning or review. [from c. 1300]
2. (banking) A sum of money deposited at a bank and subject to withdrawal. [from 1833]

   to keep one's account at the bank.

3. A statement in general of reasons, causes, grounds, etc., explanatory of some event; a reason of an action to be done.
   • 2012 January 1, Stephen Ledoux, “Behaviorism at 100”, in American Scientist‎, volume 100, number 1, page 60:

     Becoming more aware of the progress that scientists have made on behavioral fronts can reduce the risk that other natural scientists will resort to mystical agential accounts when they exceed the limits of their own disciplinary training.

   No satisfactory account has been given of these phenomena.

   • (Can we date this quote?), Luke 16:2

     Give an account of thy stewardship.

4. A reason, grounds, consideration, motive.

   on no account

   on every account

   on all accounts

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 16]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare & Co.; Sylvia Beach, OCLC 560090630; republished London: Published for the Egoist Press, London by John Rodker, Paris, October 1922, OCLC 2297483:

     […] who evidently a glutton for work, it struck him, was having a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own private account while Dublin slept.

5. (business) A business relationship involving the exchange of money and credit.
6. A record of events; recital of transactions; a relation or narrative; a report; a description. [from c. 1610]

   An account of a battle.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Howell

     A laudable account of the city of London.

   • 2000, Yunzhong Shu, Buglers on the Home Front: The Wartime Practice of the Qiyue School, State University of New York Press, →ISBN, chapter 2, 58:

     In a lapidary style, Qiu Dongping clearly and forcefully describes battlefield actions with simple sentences, giving a blow-by-blow account of successive events with neither understatement nor exaggeration.

7. An estimate or estimation; valuation; judgment.
   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, III-ii

     To stand high in your account

8. Importance; worth; value; esteem; judgement.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Alexander Pope

     Men of account

   • (Can we date this quote?) Template:William Shakespeare

     To turn to account

9. An authorization to use a service.

   I've opened an account with Wikipedia so that I can contribute and partake in the project.

10. (archaic) A reckoning; computation; calculation; enumeration; a record of some reckoning.
11. Profit; advantage.

• Abbreviations: (business): A/C, a/c, acct., acc.
• of Account, narrative, narration, recital. These words are applied to different modes of rehearsing a series of events
• Account turns attention not so much to the speaker as to the fact related, and more properly applies to the report of some single event, or a group of incidents taken as whole; as, an account of a battle, of a shipwreck, etc.
• A narrative is a continuous story of connected incidents, such as one friend might tell to another; as, a narrative of the events of a siege, a narrative of one's life, etc.
• Narration is usually the same as narrative, but is sometimes used to describe the mode of relating events; as, his powers of narration are uncommonly great.
• Recital denotes a series of events drawn out into minute particulars, usually expressing something which peculiarly interests the feelings of the speaker; as, the recital of one's wrongs, disappointments, sufferings, etc.

• For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:account.

• (registry of pecuniary transactions):
• (statement of occurrences): narrative, narration, relation, recital, description, explanation
• (a statement of reasons): accounting, explanation
• (a reason):
• (a vindication): defense, excuse, explanation
• (estimate):
• (value, importance):
• (authorization to use a service): membership, registration, username

From Anglo-Norman acounter, accomptere et al., Middle French aconter, acompter, from a- + conter (“to count”). Compare count.

account (third-person singular simple present accounts, present participle accounting, simple past and past participle accounted)

1. To provide explanation.
   1. (obsolete, transitive) To present an account of; to answer for, to justify. [14th-17th c.]
   2. (intransitive, now rare) To give an account of financial transactions, money received etc. [from 14th c.]
   3. (transitive) To estimate, consider (something to be as described). [from 14th c.]
      • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, III.8:

        The Pagan Hercules, why was he accounted a hero?

   4. (intransitive) To consider that. [from 14th c.]
      • 1611, Bible, Authorized (King James) Version, Hebrews XI.19:

        Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.

   5. (intransitive) To give a satisfactory evaluation for financial transactions, money received etc. [from 15th c.]

      An officer must account with or to the treasurer for money received.

   6. (intransitive) To give a satisfactory evaluation for (one's actions, behaviour etc.); to answer for. [from 16th c.]

      We must account for the use of our opportunities.

   7. (intransitive) To give a satisfactory reason for; to explain. [from 16th c.]

      Idleness accounts for poverty.

   8. (intransitive) To establish the location for someone. [from 19th c.]

      After the crash, not all passengers were accounted for.

   9. (intransitive) To cause the death, capture, or destruction of someone or something (+ for). [from 19th c.]
      • 1848, Thackeray, William Makepeace, chapter 45, in Vanity Fair:

        Desperately bold at last, the persecuted animals bolted above-ground—the terrier accounted for one, the keeper for another; Rawdon, from flurry and excitement, missed his rat, but on the other hand he half-murdered a ferret.

2. To count.
   1. (transitive, now rare) To calculate, work out (especially with periods of time). [from 14th c.]
      • 1646, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica:

        neither the motion of the Moon, whereby moneths are computed; nor of the Sun, whereby years are accounted, consisteth of whole numbers, but admits of fractions, and broken parts, as we have already declared concerning the Moon.

   2. (obsolete) To count (up), enumerate. [14th-17th c.]
   3. (obsolete) To recount, relate (a narrative etc.). [14th-16th c.]
      • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.6:

        Long worke it were / Here to account the endlesse progeny / Of all the weeds that bud and blossome there [...].

• (to estimate; to consider): see Thesaurus:deem

• accountable
• accountant

• account at OneLook Dictionary Search
• account in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Borrowed from English account.

• IPA^(key): /ɑˈkɑu̯nt/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: ac‧count

account n (plural accounts, diminutive accountje n)

1. a subscription to an electronic service

• accountant

Borrowed from English account.

account m (invariable)

1. (computing) account