Other forms: debits, debited
A debit is a sum taken out of a bank account. Money leaving, recorded on the statement.
Its opposite is a credit, money coming in, and the pair are the whole basis of double-entry bookkeeping, where every debit must have a matching credit. Banking gives us the direct debit, which lets an organisation take a varying amount on an agreed date, and it is how most British households pay their bills. A debit card takes money straight from the account, unlike a credit card. The verb means to take an amount out.
A debit is a debt. Latin debitum meant what is owed, from debēre, to owe, and debit and debt are the same word taken into English twice.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʰeh₁bʰ-
Latin
debitum — what is owed, a debt
Middle French
debet
English, today
debit
Built from
Middle French debet, from Latin debitum (“what is owed, a debt”), neuter of debitus, past participle of debere (“to owe”); a doublet of debt.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA