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:

    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)

    Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

    There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knolwedge, Grammatica parda, tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    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)