☼ Concept Map

''comptroller'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''comptroller'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260124114812-00-⌔

comptroller - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

comptroller (plural comptrollers)

  • 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.1
    • ✤ The terms of the licence shall, in default of agreement, be settled by the comptroller.2

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.

Pronunciation

  • either as controller or as IPA: /kəmpˈtɹoʊləɹ/, /kəmˈtɹoʊləɹ/
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Homophone: controller
  • Rhymes: -əʊlə(ɹ)

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1660 February 11 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “February 1st, 1659–1660”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume I, London: George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1893, →OCLC, page 339: ↩

  2. 1988, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 237: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •