liquidation

UK/ˌlɪkwəˈdeɪʃən/US/ˌlɪkwəˈdeɪʃən/

nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,509 of 15,258leans writtentechnical · an editor’s judgement

Other forms: liquidations

Liquidation is the closing of a company by selling everything it owns. The assets are turned into cash and the cash pays whoever is owed.

There are two kinds, since a voluntary liquidation is decided by the owners and a compulsory one is ordered by a court. The person appointed is a liquidator, and the order of who gets paid is fixed by law, with unsecured creditors and shareholders at the back of the queue. The verb is liquidate, which has a grim second sense meaning to kill, used about political opponents.

Definitions of liquidation

1nounliquidationThe winding up of a company by selling its assets to pay debts.B2+
“The firm went into liquidation in the spring.”

Where it comes from

Proto-Indo-European
*wleykʷ-
Latin
liquidātus — liquid; clear
English
liquidate
English, today
liquidation

Built from

liquidō · Latin — to turn into a liquid, melt; to make clear
liqueō · Latin — to be fluid or liquid; to be clear or transparent

From liquidate + -ion. liquidate Latin liquidātus (“liquid; clear”) + English -ate. Liquidātus is the perfect passive participle of liquidō (“to turn into a liquid, melt; to make clear”), from Latin liquidus (“fluid, liquid; clear, transparent”) + -ō; while liquidus is from liqueō (“to be fluid or liquid; to be clear or transparent”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European wleykʷ- (“to make wet; moist”)) + -idus. by surface analysis, liquid + -ate. kill (“to kill; to abolish or eliminate”) is a Russian ликвиди́ровать; while business tr and business intr (business-related senses) were influenced by French liquider and Italian liquidare, all ultimately from Latin liquidus (see above).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 7 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

liquidation in the wild

Code is the bankruptcy code that governs the process of liquidation under the bankruptcy laws of the United States.
Chapter 7, Title 11, United States Code
When a company has been liquidated, it is sometimes said to be wound-up or dissolved, although dissolution technically refers only to the final stage of liquidation.
Liquidation
The term "liquidation" is also used informally for a company divesting some of its assets.
Liquidation
Prior to liquidation, it was the largest independently owned, publicly traded department store chain in the United States.
Gottschalks
Continuation of an entity as a going concern is presumed as the basis for financial reporting unless and until the entity's liquidation becomes imminent.
Going concern

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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 liqueō family

liquid

liquidation — used about once every 23,598 pages · #13,509 · point at the bar for the others

liquidity

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