the legal state in which a person or business cannot pay the money owed and is officially declared insolvent by a court
After losing his job and facing huge medical bills, Mark filed for bankruptcy to protect his home.
The company narrowly avoided bankruptcy by securing a last-minute loan from investors.
✦ Derived from Italian ‘banca rotta’ meaning ‘broken bench’, referring to moneylenders’ benches being broken as a sign of insolvency in medieval Italy.
a complete failure or total lack of something important, such as morals, ideas, or creativity
The scandal revealed the moral bankruptcy of the government’s leaders.
Critics accused the sequel of creative bankruptcy, saying it repeated every old joke.
