Bankrupt

This word first appeared during the 16th century and is a combination of bank and the Latin ruptus meaning broken. The word bank derives from the Old Italian banca meaning a table and refers to the moneylender’s table, which was the first primitive form of banking. Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary published in 1755 says that when moneylenders went insolvent their tables were broken up, hence bankrupt literally meant ‘a broken table’. From this same root, we also get the expression broke which evolved from broken meaning penniless. Broken meaning penniless dates from the late 16th century but more popularly became ‘broke’, without the n, from the early 18th century onwards.