debt

plural debts · alternative obsolete dette · alternative obsolete det

1. countableuncountableAn action, state of mind, or object one has an obligation to perform for another, adopt toward another, or give to another.

   This long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid.

   1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 14, in The Scarlet Letter

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   Revenge the jeering and disdain'd contempt / Of this proud king, who studies day and night / To answer all the debt he owes to you / Even with the bloody payment of your deaths.

   1589, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I, act 1, scene 3

2. countableuncountableThe state or condition of owing something to another.

   I am in your debt.

   3 more examples

   We owe them a debt of gratitude for taking care of our pets.

   The petty ſtreames that paie a dailie det / To their ſalt ſoveraigne with their freſh fals haſt, / Adde to his flowe, but alter not his taſt.

   1594, William Shakespeare, Lucrece (First Quarto), London: […] Richard Field, for Iohn Harrison, […], →OCLC

   Hey! Wait! I've got a new complaint / Forever in debt to your priceless advice

   1993, Kurt Cobain, “Heart-Shaped Box”, in In Utero, performed by Nirvana

3. countableuncountablebusinessMoney that one person or entity owes or is required to pay to another, generally as a result of a loan or other financial transaction.

   I don't own any stocks or bonds. All my money is tied up in debt.

   2004, George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, New York: Hyperion Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 213

   2 more examples

   Bolsheviki had repudiated the four-billion-dollar debt which the government of the Tsar had contracted with the bankers.

   1919, Upton Sinclair, chapter 15, in Jimmie Higgins

   Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.

   2013 June 22, “Engineers of a different kind”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 70

4. countableuncountablelawAn action at law to recover a certain specified sum of money alleged to be due