History
While the actual origin of the terms debit and credit is unknown, the first known recorded use of the terms is Venetian Luca Pacioli's 1494 work, Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita (translated: Everything About Arithmetic, Geometry and Proportion). Pacioli devoted one section of his book to documenting and describing the double-entry bookkeeping system in use during the Renaissance by Venetian merchants, traders and bankers. This system is still the fundamental system in use by modern bookkeepers.
In its original Latin, Pacioli's Summa used the Latin words debere (to owe) and credere (to entrust) to describe the two sides of a closed accounting transaction. When his work was translated, the Latin words debere and credere became the English debit and credit. The abbreviations Dr (for debit) and Cr (for credit) likely derive from the original Latin.
Read more about this topic: Debits And Credits
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