bill of entry

6.4

An official paper that lists goods coming into or leaving a country for customs

noun

Indian

: documento de entrada

The importer submitted a bill of entry listing all the goods and their values.

Examples

The customs official reviewed the bill of entry before allowing the shipment into the country.
Every consignment must be accompanied by a bill of entry to ensure proper documentation.
The bill of entry was submitted.
Don't forget the bill of entry!
The customs official reviewed the bill of entry before allowing the shipment into the country.
Every consignment must be accompanied by a bill of entry to ensure proper documentation.
The importer submitted a bill of entry listing all the goods and their values.

Surface Forms

bill of entry singular

bills of entry plural

Morphology

bill + of + entry

The parts 'bill' (a document) and 'entry' (a recorded item) give a compositional sense — a document relating to an entry — but the precise bureaucratic meaning ('a customs document listing goods for clearance') is specialist and not fully predictable by a B1 learner. The word 'bill' can also cue an invoice/payment sense, which may mislead learners, so some domain knowledge or exposure is needed.

Etymology

Bill of entry may come from old trade practice, where merchants wrote a bill, a 'list' of goods, when items entered a port and were recorded. Customs used that paper to check and record the items, so today a bill of entry is the official document listing imports for customs.