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creditor

UK/ˈkɹɛdɪtə/US/ˈkɹɛdɪtɚ/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,441 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: creditors

A creditor is a person or firm that is owed money. Pay the creditors, a secured creditor, creditors meeting.

In an insolvency the order matters enormously: secured creditors are paid first and unsecured ones usually get little or nothing, which is why the distinction is fought over. Creditor and debtor are the pair that runs through all of accounting. Note that the Latin means one who lends, from credere, to trust.

Definitions of creditor

  1. 1nouncreditorA person or firm that is owed money.C1

    “When the company went bankrupt, its creditors got back only a small part of what they were owed.”

creditor is a person owed money.

Where it comes from

Latin creditor comes from credere, to trust or lend. Credit, creed and credible come from the same trusting.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *ḱerd-

  2. Latin

    crēditor

  3. Anglo-Norman

    creditour

  4. Middle English

    creditour

  5. English, today

    creditor

Built from

  • crēditum · Latin — loan
  • crēdō · Latin — lend

From Middle English creditour, from Anglo-Norman creditour, from Latin crēditor, from crēditum (“loan”), from crēditus, perfect passive participle of crēdō (“lend”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Business & Money

Practise this word

creditor in the wild

  • Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts.

    Bankruptcy

  • A creditor or lender is a party (e.g., person, organization, company, or government) that has a claim on the services of a second party.

    Creditor

  • The first party is called the creditor, which is the lender of property, service, or money.

    Creditor

  • If X borrowed money from their bank, X is the debtor and the bank is the creditor.

    Debtor

  • If X puts money in the bank, X is the creditor and the bank is the debtor.

    Debtor

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the crēdō family

incredibleincredibly

creditor — used about once every 23,598 pages · #13,441 · point at the bar for the others