Bankruptcy
legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts
Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor.
Bankrupt is not the only legal status that an insolvent person may have, meaning the term bankruptcy is not a synonym for insolvency.
Etymology
The word bankruptcy is derived from Italian banca rotta, literally meaning 'broken bank'. The term is often described as having originated in Renaissance Italy, where there allegedly existed the tradition of smashing a banker's bench if he defaulted on payment. However, the existence of such a ritual is doubted.
History
In Ancient Greece, bankruptcy did not exist. If a man owed and he could not pay, he and his wife, children or servants were forced into "debt slavery" until the creditor recouped losses through their physical labour. Many city-states in ancient Greece limited debt slavery to a period of five years; debt slaves had protection of life and limb, which regular slaves did not have. However, servants of the debtor could be retained beyond that deadline by the creditor and were often forced to serve their new lord for a lifetime, usually under significantly harsher conditions.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bankruptcy” is legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bankruptcy, legal and process, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q152074. The Library of Congress control number is sh85011601. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bankruptcy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.