straight-line method
- noun
- Specialized
:
método de línea recta
- The accountant used the straight-line method to calculate the depreciation of the office equipment over five years.
Examples
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"Depreciation is computed by use of the straight-line method over the estimated useful lives of the assets, which for buildings is the lesser of 30 years or the remaining life of the underlying building; between two to five years for machinery and equipment, including product tooling and manufacturing process equipment..."
Blog text (26) -
By applying the straight-line method, the company spread the cost of its new vehicle evenly across its expected lifespan.
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Using the straight-line method allowed the firm to accurately report its annual depreciation expenses for tax purposes.
Synonyms
A way of charging the same cost each year for an asset that loses value
How Accelerated
- Specialized
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
straight-line + method
The phrase combines a transparent adjectival compound 'straight-line' (literally straight + line → even/constant) with 'method' (a procedure), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents can infer it denotes a procedure that applies depreciation evenly over time. The accounting-specific nuance (depreciation allocation each year) follows directly from the compositional meaning and is cross-linguistically paralleled, making the expression predictable from its parts.
Etymology
Straight-line method comes from a simple picture: if you draw an item's value over time, the yearly drops make a straight line because the loss is the same each year. So the phrase means a 'method' to 'spread the cost into equal parts' across the item's life.
