liquidation
/ˌlɪkwəˈdeɪʃən/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.26 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The act of exchange of an asset of lesser liquidity with a more liquid one, such as cash.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
The action or process of winding up the affairs of a company, etc.; the selling of the assets of a business as part of the process of dissolving the business.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
The action or process of abolishing or eliminating; the murder of dehumanized victims.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "The store is having a liquidation sale: everything must go as they go out of business."
- "And, in a sign of how wide the property crash is, the latest item to turn up in liquidation sales in Dublin is a job lot of 15 cranes, including a pair towering over Anglo Irish Bank's half-built headquarters in the city's docklands."
- "Their compenſation becomes part of the national debt, for the liquidation of which there is the one exhautſtleſs fund."
- "[A] money-box was kept on the kitchen mantelshelf, into which it was publicly made known that all my earnings were dropped. I have an impression that they were to be contributed eventually towards the liquidation of the National Debt, but I know I had no hope of any personal participation in the treasure."
- "Gilles Postel-Vinay has calculated that the increased peasant debt of the 1930s was lighter than that of the previous agricultural depression of the 1880s because the wartime profits and inflation of 1914–18 had permitted the liquidation of previous debt."
- "Near-synonyms: devitalization, fatality; see also Thesaurus:death, Thesaurus:killing"
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *wleykʷ- Proto-Indo-European *-éh₁ti Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éh₁yeti Proto-Indo-European *wlikʷéh₁yeti Proto-Italic *(w)likʷēō Latin liqueō Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-der. Proto-Italic *-iðos Latin -idus Classical Latin liquidus Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Classical Latin -ō Late Latin liquidō ▲ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos Proto-Italic *-ātos Classical Latin -ātus English liquidate Proto-Indo-European *-tis Proto-Indo-European *-Hō Proto-Indo-European *-tiHō Proto-Italic *-tiō Latin -tiō Latin -ātiōlbor. Old French -ationbor. Middle English -acioun English -ation English -ion ▲ Late Latin liquidōbor. Italian liquidarebor. Middle French liquider ▲ Old French -ation Middle French -ation Middle French liquidationbor. English liquidation * From liquidate + -ion (suffix forming nouns denoting an action or process). Liquidate is a learned borrowing from Late Latin liquidātus, the perfect passive participle of liquidō (“to turn into a liquid, melt; to make clear”), from Classical Latin liquidus (“fluid, liquid; clear, transparent”) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs). * Alternatively, a borrowing from Middle French liquidation, from liquider (“to liquidate”) + -ation (suffix forming nouns denoting an action or process). Liquider is probably a borrowing from Italian liquidare, itself also from the aforementioned Late Latin liquidō by borrowing.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Finance.