Meaning & use
bankrupt
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Meanings
adjectivenot comparable
Not having enough money to pay what you owe, and officially declared unable to do so by a court.
Grammar: Used after a linking verb like be, go, or become: The company went bankrupt. It is not used before a noun in this sense.
Patterns
- be bankrupt
- go bankrupt
- become bankrupt
After the factory closed, the family was bankrupt and lost their home.
The airline went bankrupt last year and stopped all flights.
He was declared bankrupt by the court after failing to pay his debts.
adjectivenot comparablefigurative
Completely without a particular good quality, such as ideas, morals, or intelligence.
Grammar: Used before a noun: a bankrupt policy. Often followed by of: bankrupt of ideas.
Patterns
- bankrupt of something
- morally bankrupt
- intellectually bankrupt
The party's policies were bankrupt of new ideas.
His behavior was morally bankrupt and shocked everyone.
The argument was intellectually bankrupt and convinced no one.
nouncountablelegal
A person who has been officially declared unable to pay their debts.
Grammar: Countable noun: a bankrupt, two bankrupts. Usually used in legal or formal contexts.
Patterns
- a bankrupt
- declared a bankrupt
The court declared him a bankrupt after he failed to repay the loan.
As a bankrupt, she could not take out any new credit.
verbtransitive
To make a person or organization unable to pay their debts, often by legal action.
Grammar: Takes an object: bankrupt a company. Often used in the passive: was bankrupted by the lawsuit.
Patterns
- bankrupt someone
- bankrupt a company
- be bankrupted by something
The huge fine bankrupted the small business.
He was bankrupted by years of medical bills.
Word forms
| third person singular | bankrupts |
|---|---|
| past tense | bankrupted |
| past participle | bankrupted |
| -ing form | bankrupting |
| plural | bankrupts |
Common combinations
- go bankrupt
- The restaurant went bankrupt after only six months.
- declare someone bankrupt
- The judge declared him bankrupt and froze his accounts.
- morally bankrupt
- Critics called the regime morally bankrupt.
- bankrupt of ideas
- The team seemed bankrupt of ideas in the second half.
Synonyms and how they differ
- insolvent
- Insolvent is a formal, technical term meaning unable to pay debts, but it does not always mean a court has officially declared it; bankrupt usually implies a legal declaration.
- ruined
- Ruined means having lost all one's money or wealth, often through bad luck or poor decisions, but it is less specific about a legal process than bankrupt.
Opposites
Word family
- bankruptcy noun
- The legal status or process of being bankrupt.
- bankrupt verb
- To make someone unable to pay their debts.
Commonly confused: bankrupt or bankruptsy?
bankrupt vs bankruptsy
A common misspelling of bankruptcy; the correct spelling ends in -cy, not -sy.
Practice
Choose the correct word: After losing its biggest client, the company went ___.
Choose one answer.
The phrase 'go bankrupt' uses the adjective after the verb 'go'. 'Bankruptcy' is a noun and would need 'into bankruptcy', while 'bankrupted' and 'bankrupting' are verb forms that do not fit after 'went' here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “bankrupt”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.