bankrupt

Etymology

Recorded from the 1530s as a noun, “insolvent person”,^[1][2] and from the 1560s as an adjective.^[1] In the 16th century it appears as banke rota and banqueroute,^[3] borrowed from Italian banca rotta (“broken bench”) and its adaptation French banqueroute,^[3][2] from banca “moneylender's bench” (see bank) + rotta “broken”,^[1][4] from Latin rupta, feminine past participle of Latin rumpere (“to break”).^[2][1] The second element was later remodelled on Latin ruptus.^[3][1]

The name is said to come from an old custom of breaking the bench of a bankrupt moneylender,^[1][5] but the allusion is probably figurative.^[1]

References

1. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
2. [1] [2] [3] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. [1] [2] [3] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. [1] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
5. [1] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org