English

Noun

audit ‎(plural audits)

1. An audience; a hearing.
   • Milton

     He appeals to a high audit.

2. An examination in general.
3. A judicial examination.
4. An independent review and examination of records and activities to assess the adequacy of system controls, to ensure compliance with established policies and operational procedures, and to recommend necessary changes in controls, policies, or procedures

   National Assembly audit

5. The result of such an examination, or an account as adjusted by auditors; final account.
   • Shakespeare

     Yet I can make my audit up.

6. (Scientology) Spiritual counseling, which forms the core of Dianetics.
   • 1978, Bartley, William Warren, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., ISBN 0-517-53502-5, page 146-47:

     [ Werner Erhard said:] I got a lot of benefit from auditing. It was the fastest and deepest way to handle situations that I had yet encountered. I immediately wanted to learn to do it. ... With Scientology, I was able to characterize the Mind more accurately, and to cease justifying it. This greatly clarified what I was doing. ... After my experience with Scientology, I saw what it means to see the Mind as a machine. I can now operate my Mind accordingly, with exactitude. I can do the familiar mind over matter experiments - the control of pain and bleeding, telepathy, those things.

   • 2007, “New Age and Business: Corporations as Cultic Milieus?”, in Handbook of the New Age (Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion), volume 1, Leiden: BRILL, ISBN 9789004153554, pages 196-197:

     Some spiritual management trainings, aiming at the self-actualisation—or rather self-realisation—in the corporate world, have advocated a rather authoritarian treatment of their trainees. A well-known example is Landmark Education International, Inc., a management-oriented derivate of Werner Erhard's famous seminars called est (an acronym for Erhard Seminars Training) developed in the 1970s. Participants of Erhard's seminars were typically treated as follows [...] In an article of the German management magazine Wirtschaftswoche, Landmark was indeed accused of 'brainwashing' [...] The trainings of Landmark, Block Training and UP Hans Schuster und Partner thus display strong similarities with the self-improvement seminars of Scientology, which are incidentally called 'auditing sessions', a term taken from the business world.

7. (obsolete) A general receptacle or receiver.
   • Jeremy Taylor

     It [a little brook] paid to its common audit no more than the revenues of a little cloud.

Derived terms

• audit ale
• audit house
• audit room

Translations

Verb

audit ‎(third-person singular simple present audits, present participle auditing, simple past and past participle audited)

1. To examine and adjust (e.g. an account).

   to audit the accounts of a treasure, or of parties who have a suit depending in court

2. (finance, business) To conduct an independent review and examination of system records and activities in order to test the adequacy and effectiveness of data security and data integrity procedures, to ensure compliance with established policy and operational procedures, and to recommend any necessary changes
3. (Scientology) To counsel spiritually.
   • 2011, Diane Saks, Overcoming Celebrity Obsession (page 225)

     In John's case, I suspect, when he lost Diana he went back to his Scientology church to be audited.

4. To attend an academic class on a not-for-academic-credit basis.

Translations

French

Etymology 1

Contraction

audit

1. Contraction of à + ledit.

Etymology 2

From English

Noun

audit m ‎(plural audits)

1. audit

Latin

Verb

audit

1. third-person singular present active indicative of audiō