Stocktaken

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Having had the goods in a business physically counted and recorded to establish how much stock is on hand
2. Describing a store's merchandise that has been inventoried and tallied at a set point in time
3. Referring to items that were checked, counted and listed during a full inventory of a company's goods

Etymology: Stocktaking was originally a plain business term: a merchant counted the goods in his warehouse, the "stock," and recorded what was left. The verb "stocktake" is a back-formation from the noun "stocktaking," which appears in English from the early 19th century, and "stock" in this sense goes back to Old English "stocc," meaning a trunk or tree-stump, later extended to the supply of goods held in store. The idea of a "stock" as a supply of merchandise probably arose from the image of goods laid in as a store, though the exact path is uncertain. The verb itself is comparatively recent. Its first uses are generally dated to the 20th century, and its main sense is to make a formal inventory of goods, or more loosely, to review and assess the state of a situation. A reader would find its meaning transparent: you take stock of what you have, and the phrase is simply the action of doing so.