Meaning & use
creditor
Last updated
UK/ˈkredɪtə/
US/ˈkredɪtər/
Meaning
nouncountablefinance
A person or company that is owed money by someone else.
Grammar: Countable: a creditor, creditors. Often used in the plural in business contexts.
Patterns
- a creditor of someone
- owe money to a creditor
- pay off creditors
The company failed to pay its creditors on time.
She is a creditor of the estate and will be repaid first.
After the bankruptcy, creditors received only part of what they were owed.
Word forms
| plural | creditors |
|---|
Common combinations
- pay off creditors
- The business sold assets to pay off its creditors.
- a major creditor
- The bank is the country's largest creditor.
- creditor nation
- A creditor nation lends more than it borrows.
- owe a creditor
- They owe several creditors large sums.
Synonyms and how they differ
- lender
- Focuses on the act of lending; a lender may not yet be owed money, while a creditor is already owed.
- debtee
- Very rare and technical; almost never used in everyday English.
Opposites
Word family
- credit noun
- Money added to an account, or trust that someone will pay later.
- crediting verb
- The act of adding money to an account.
- creditworthy adjective
- Safe to lend money to.
Commonly confused: creditor or debtor?
creditor vs debtor
A debtor owes money; a creditor is owed money. They are opposites and easy to mix up.
Practice
In a bankruptcy, who is legally owed money?
Choose one answer.
A creditor is the one who is owed money. A debtor (and a borrower) owes money; a customer may be either, so it is not precise.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “creditor”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.
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