Meaning & use
line item
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Meanings
nouncountablebusinessfinance
A single entry on its own row in a budget, bill or accounting record, showing one cost or amount.
Grammar: Countable: each line item has its own price.
Patterns
- a line item for something
- a line item in something
The invoice has a separate line item for shipping.
Marketing is the biggest line item in this year's budget.
Please check each line item before you approve the bill.
nouncountablebusiness
A particular spending item in a government budget that lawmakers can approve or reject on its own.
Grammar: Often used in politics: a line item for road repairs.
Patterns
- a line item for something
The mayor removed a line item for a new fountain.
The budget contains a line item for school buses.
Word forms
| plural | line items |
|---|
Common combinations
- a separate line item
- Taxes appear as a separate line item on the receipt.
- cut a line item
- The council cut a line item for travel.
- budget line item
- Each budget line item needs a manager's approval.
- itemize line items
- The contractor itemized every line item in the quote.
- review each line item
- We reviewed each line item to find savings.
Synonyms and how they differ
- entry
- Entry is a general word for any recorded item, while line item always means one row in a financial list.
- item
- Item is broader and can be any thing in a list; line item stresses the row on a bill or budget.
- charge
- A charge is the money asked for something, whereas a line item is the row that shows it.
- expense
- An expense is the cost itself; a line item is how it appears on the document.
Word family
Commonly confused: line item or line-item veto?
line item vs line-item veto
This is the power of an executive to cancel one part of a spending bill, not a type of entry itself.
Practice
The invoice showed delivery as a separate ___, so the customer could see its exact cost.
Choose one answer.
A line item is one entry on a bill. The other words are real but do not describe a row of cost on an invoice.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “line item”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.