Other forms: ledgers
A ledger is the book in which every transaction is recorded. The general ledger, enter it in the ledger, ledger balance.
In double-entry bookkeeping every transaction goes in twice, as a debit and a credit, and the ledger is where those entries live — the system is about five hundred years old and has not needed replacing. A distributed ledger is the same idea kept by many parties at once, which is what a blockchain is. Note ledger line in music, the short line above or below the stave.
1nounledgerThe book in which every transaction is recorded.
“The shopkeeper wrote every sale in a big leather ledger.”
ledger is an account book.
Middle English ligger meant something that lies in place, from liggen, to lie. A ledger was the book that stayed permanently in one place, unlike the day book carried about.
Proto-Indo-European
*legʰ- — to lie down
Old English
liċġan — to lie down; to be situated
Middle English
liggere
English, today
ledger
Built from
From Middle English liggere, ligger, leger (“large breviary; beam, plank; dweller, inhabitant”), from liggen, leggen, variants of līen (“to lie down; to bow, kneel, prostrate; to die; to be located (somewhere); to remain in place, stay”), from Old English liċġan (“to lie down; to be situated”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European legʰ- (“to lie down”). The word is cognate with stq Lägger (“floor board, joist, plank”), West Frisian lêger (“beam, plank”), Dutch legger (“daybook; layer”) (from leggen (“to lay”), liggen (“to lie down”)), and is related to English ledge, lie (“to be prostrate”). The verb is derived from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA