The Etymology of Ledger
Ledger reached its modern spelling and sense in the late sixteenth century, but the word goes back to Middle English legger, recorded from 1481 for any large, heavy book that lay in one place. The first element comes from leggen, to lay (the Germanic ancestor of modern lay and lie), with Dutch and Low German influence — Dutch legger still means a thing that lies, especially a stationary register. A church might keep a legger of donations on a lectern; a monastery a legger of holdings; a merchant a legger of debts. By the 1580s the financial sense had crystallised, and ledger became the name of the master account book in which a tradesman’s daybook entries were posted in their permanent form. The architectural senses — a ledger stone in a church floor, a ledger beam in scaffolding — preserve the original idea: something heavy that simply lies there, fixed, until it is needed.