Origin of The Term Ledger
Originally, a ledger was a large volume of scripture/service book kept in one place in church and accessible. According to Charles Wriothesley's Chronicle (1538):
| “ | The curates should provide a booke of the bible in Englishe, of the largest volume, to be a ledger in the same church for the parishioners to read on. | ” |
It is an application of this original meaning that is found in the commercial usage of the term for the principal book of account in a business house.
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Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin, term and/or ledger:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One man isn’t any better than another, not because they are equal, but because they are intrinsically other, that there is no term of comparison.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life’s ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)