to cast up one's accounts

9.3

To add up the money someone gets and spends to find the total

idiom

: hacer cuentas

After a year of working, he decided to cast up his accounts to see how much he had saved.

Examples

12 months pass, draw a line, cast up your accounts, and pay the taxman.

Blog text (15)
It's essential to cast up your accounts regularly to keep track of your expenses and income.
Before finalizing the budget for the next year, the manager will cast up the accounts from last year.

Synonyms

to add up

vsto cast up one's accounts

118 1.0

Find the total of several numbers

is applied to accounting records to check overall financial totals

to cash up

vsto cast up one's accounts

1 5.2

To count and write down all the money taken at the end of a workday

is broader used to calculate overall income expenses or savings

to tot up

vsto cast up one's accounts

5.1

To add a group of numbers to find the total

is used to review financial records and assess income or expenses

Surface Forms

cast up one's accounts infinitive

cast up one's accounts past

cast up one's accounts past participle

casting up one's accounts present participle

casts up one's accounts third person singular

Morphology

cast + up + one + account

The sense 'to calculate/add up' is not transparently derived from the common meaning of 'cast' (usually 'throw'), so a learner who only knows the literal constituents would not immediately get the exact meaning. However, the particle 'up' suggests completion and the noun 'accounts' makes the financial summing sense plausible, and 'cast up' is a (somewhat archaic) phrasal verb meaning 'add up', so there are partial cues but not full predictability for a B1 learner.

Etymology

The phrase cast up one's accounts comes from old bookkeepers who would gather the numbers and cast them together to make a final up total for the accounts, like counting coins into one pile. So, it means 'to add up financial records'.