Pronounced: SKAR-buh-ruh war-ning
Notes: A phrase I didn’t know
Yesterday’s word
The word per contra means
- on the contrary; by way of contrast
- as an offset
First usage
Our word came into English in the mid-1500s
Background / Comments
Our word comes from Italian, where it means “by the opposite side of the ledger”. A Franciscan friar and mathematician named Luca Pacioli (a friend of Leonardo da Vinci) is called “the father of accounting” because he first published a detailed description of bookkeeping practices – and are still used today. Part of his teaching was to enter debits and credits in different columns. Our word was used to to describe the balancing entry (entries) on the other side of the ledger.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 