Ledger - Origin of The Term Ledger

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.

Read more about this topic:  Ledger

Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin, term and/or ledger:

    The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.
    Georges Bataille (1897–1962)

    We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.”
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.
    Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)

    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)