The word "bankrupt" comes from the old practice of doing what?

The term "bankrupt" traces to medieval Italian marketplaces, where merchants conducted business at outdoor benches called "banca," also the root of the word "bank." When a lender defaulted or defrauded customers, his bench was physically broken, or "rotta," as a public signal he was no longer trustworthy, and "banca rotta" eventually became the English word "bankrupt."

Burning account books or locking bank doors are plausible-sounding but incorrect guesses, since neither reflects the documented origin, specifically tied to physically destroying the trading bench.

This origin explains why "bank" and "bankrupt" are so closely linked — one word for the trading surface where business thrived, the other for what happened to it when business failed.