bad debt

English

Noun

bad debt (countable and uncountable, plural bad debts)

1. (business, accounting) A debt which cannot be recovered from the debtor, either because the debtor lacks the money to pay or because the debtor cannot be found and/or forced to pay.
   • 2011 July 18, John Cassidy, “Mastering the Machine”, in The New Yorker‎^[1], →ISSN:

     The firm’s researchers also went through the public accounts of nearly all the major financial institutions in the world and constructed estimates of how much money they stood to lose from bad debts.

Translations

unrecoverable debt

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 壞賬／坏账 (zh) (huàizhàng)

• Finnish: luottotappio (fi)
• French: créance douteuse f, créance irrécouvrable f
• German: Forderungsausfall m
• Indonesian: utang buruk
• Malay: hutang lapuk
• Polish: nieściągalne należności f pl, nieściągalne wierzytelności f pl
• Vietnamese: nợ xấu

See also

• non-performing loan
• uncollectible

Further reading

• “bad debt”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “bad debt”, in Collins English Dictionary.