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inventory

UK/ˈɪn.vən.tɹi/US/ˈɪn.vənˌtɔɹ.i/
nounB23 meaningsCommon in everyday speech and writing · #3,836 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: inventories, inventoried

An inventory is a full count of what is there — every item, written down, one line at a time. The clipboard in the stockroom on the last night of the month, one person calling out numbers while another ticks the sheet.

It is a business word first, and it reaches further than shops. A landlord takes an inventory of a flat before you move in, so that the missing spoon is somebody's fault later; a museum keeps an inventory of everything in its rooms. In American English inventory is also the goods themselves — we are carrying too much inventory — where British English says stock. It works as a verb too: staff inventory the shelves every June. The phrase to learn is take an inventory of, and you can take one of your own skills or worries as readily as of a warehouse.

Pete Brown from Gambrills, MD, USA · CC BY 2.0

Definitions of inventory

  1. 1nouninventoryA complete written list of everything held in a place, and the counting that produces it.B2~55%

    “The manager took an inventory of the stockroom.”

    synonyms: list, catalogue

  2. 2noungoodsThe goods and materials a business is holding, especially in American English.B2~43%

    “Half the inventory sat unsold until spring.”

  3. 3verbwriteTo count something and write down what is there.B2~2%

    “Staff inventory the warehouse every June.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 126 sentences found in the wild and placed 125 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

inventory is a list.

Also accepted in games: stock

Where it comes from

Latin inveniō meant to find, to come upon. An inventārium was a list of what had been found in a place — everything the eye lands on in a room, written down — and Medieval Latin turned it into inventorium, which English took as inventorie. Invent was built on the same Latin verb: to invent is to come upon a thing nobody had found before.

  1. Latin

    inventārium

  2. Medieval Latin

    inventorium

  3. Middle English

    inventorie

  4. English, today

    inventory

From Middle English inventorie, from Medieval Latin inventorium, alteration of Latin inventārium, from Latin inveniō (“to find out”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Work & Careers, Shopping & Money, Business & Money, Factory & Manufacturing, Antiques & Collecting

Practise this word

inventory in the wild

  • In the context of services, inventory refers to all work done prior to sale, including partially process information.

    Inventory

  • The Naval Vessel Register (NVR) is the official inventory of ships and service craft in custody of or titled by the United States Navy.

    Naval Vessel Register

  • The costs of those goods which are not yet sold are deferred as costs of inventory until the inventory is sold or written down in value.

    Cost of goods sold

  • When a business records the inventory of its stock, it counts the quantity it has of each unit, or SKU.

    Stock keeping unit

  • In the context of libraries and archives, an inventory refers to a detailed list or record of the items, materials, or resources held within a collection.

    Inventory (library and archive)

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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.