Comptroller
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The chief accountant of a company or government.
"So the Comptroller and I thence to a tavern hard by, and there did agree upon drawing up some letters to be sent to all the pursers and Clerks of the Cheques to make up their accounts."
- 2 someone who maintains and audits business accounts wordnet
Example
More examples"So the Comptroller and I thence to a tavern hard by, and there did agree upon drawing up some letters to be sent to all the pursers and Clerks of the Cheques to make up their accounts."
Etymology
From late Middle English compteroller, a spelling variant of countreroller (from which controller) due to folk etymology: the word was thought to have an etymological connection with Middle French compte (“account”) (Middle French compteroleur is attested circa 1375). Originally the two spellings were equivalent and pronounced identically; the modern pronunciation with [mp] is based on the spelling.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.