Other forms: auditors
An auditor is somebody who checks the accounts of an organisation to confirm they are accurate and honest. An external auditor, the auditors signed off the accounts, an internal audit team.
The point of the role is independence: an external auditor works for a different firm from the one being checked, which is what makes the sign-off worth anything. Internal auditors work inside the organisation and check its processes. The verb is audit and the activity is an audit, and audit has spread well beyond money — an energy audit, a security audit, a content audit. In American universities, to audit a course is to attend it without taking the exam.
1nounauditorSomebody who officially checks financial accounts.
“The auditors raised three points and none of them was serious.”
2nouncarriesSomebody who carries out a formal review of a process.
“The auditor spent two days on the safety records.”
auditor is a person who checks.
Latin auditor means a hearer, from audire, to hear — the same verb behind audience and audible. Medieval accounts were read aloud and checked by ear, because the people checking them often could not read. The word remembers a procedure nobody has used for six hundred years.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ew-
Latin
audītor — hearer, auditor
Anglo-Norman
auditour
English, today
auditor
From Anglo-Norman auditour, from Latin audītor (“hearer, auditor”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA