IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/acbsfi/v19y2009i2p149-166.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Accounting and the words to tell it: an historical perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Pierre Labardin
  • Marc Nikitin

Abstract

In the French language, the word comptabilite (accounting) first appeared in the middle of the eighteenth century. It was used in the Royal finances and its first meaning was that of accountability. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, or thereabouts, the uses of the word evolved gradually but in a somewhat confused manner. Once its meaning had become stabilised, the growing use of the word by an increasing population and the development of accounting activities created a need for adjectives to be added. Commercial, industrial and agricultural accounting, general and auxiliary accounting appeared, as well as the use of comptabilite to designate the accounting department. In this paper, we examine the evolution of words in the context of the development of accounting, seeking some help from amongst linguists.

Suggested Citation

  • Pierre Labardin & Marc Nikitin, 2009. "Accounting and the words to tell it: an historical perspective," Accounting History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 149-166.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:acbsfi:v:19:y:2009:i:2:p:149-166
    DOI: 10.1080/09585200902969260
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585200902969260
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09585200902969260?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Laaksonen, Jenni, 2022. "Translation, hegemony and accounting: A critical research framework with an illustration from the IFRS context," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    2. Yves Levant & Marc Nikitin, 2011. "Les comptabilités financière et de gestion peuvent elles être totalement intégrées ?," Post-Print hal-00650547, HAL.
    3. Pascale Bueno Merino & Samuel Grandval & Marc Feuilloley, 2014. "L’analyse du business model par les normes IAS-IFRS : le rôle de la ligne spécifique du compte de résultat," Post-Print hal-01899386, HAL.
    4. Marc Nikitin, 2008. "Les auteurs comptables: une élite à géométrie variable," Post-Print hal-00493619, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:acbsfi:v:19:y:2009:i:2:p:149-166. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RABF21 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.