inventory

Pluralinventories

Formsinventories, inventorying, inventoried

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The stock of a particular item kept on hand at a business or location.

   The warehouse holds enough inventory to cover three months of orders.

   Rising costs forced the shop to reduce its inventory of imported goods.

   Similarstock, supply, merchandise, goods, stockpile

   Note

   The commercial sense starts from finding. Middle English inventorie goes back through Medieval and Late Latin to inveniō, "to find out": an inventory is what turns up when you look. In operations it names goods held at a site, capital tied up until they are sold or consumed. It works as a mass noun (enough inventory) and as a countable one (an undersized inventory at one outlet).

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A detailed list recording all of the items kept on hand.

   She compared the physical stock against the inventory line by line.

   The auditor found three items missing from the inventory.

   Similarlist, catalog, register, record, manifest

   Note

   The record rather than the goods: an itemized account, typically noting the quantity, location and condition of each item, kept for accounting or audit. Context separates it from the stock itself. An inventory you check against the shelves, or find items missing from, is the list. One you run low on is the goods.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The process of producing or updating a detailed list of the items on hand.

   Inventory is scheduled for the last weekend of every month.

   The team completed inventory ahead of the audit.

   Similarstocktaking

   Note

   The word for the event rather than the document: counting, recording and reconciling what is on hand, often on a fixed cycle. It frequently drops the article (inventory is scheduled for the weekend; the team completed inventory) or takes a time phrase (this month's inventory took nearly three days). The same work as an action is the verb to inventory.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To count and record the resources or items on hand, producing a detailed list.

   Volunteers inventory the donated supplies before distributing them.

   Each branch must inventory its stock before the fiscal year ends.

   Similarcount, catalog, itemize, list, record

   Note

   The list becomes an action here. The verb is transitive, and what gets counted is its object: inventory the store, inventory the donated supplies. Its spelling follows the noun. The y becomes i in inventories and inventoried, but inventorying keeps it, as in Jasper Fforde's Red Side Story (2024): "we're inventorying all the stock today."

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A storage space holding the items a game character carries for immediate use.

   She rummaged through her inventory looking for the rope she had picked up.

   The game lets you expand your inventory by buying bigger bags.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   The complete set of a particular linguistic feature found within a language.

   Linguists mapped the entire sound inventory of the endangered language.

   The vowel inventory expanded as the dialect borrowed foreign words.

   Similarsystem, repertoire

   Note

   A phonologist's word for a closed set: the phonemes or other units a language actually uses, treated as a system. It is usually modified by the feature in question, as in vocalic, consonantal or sound inventory. Size is the usual point of comparison. Germanic languages lean toward large vocalic inventories, and Guillaume Jacques (2014) describes a tonal language with "a rich consonantal and vocalic inventory."

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