bottom-liner

noun

bot·​tom-lin·​er ˈbä-təm-ˌlī-nər How to pronounce bottom-liner (audio)
plural bottom-liners
chiefly US, often disparaging
: a person (such as an accountant) whose attention is focused on profits and losses : a person who is chiefly or solely concerned with the financial bottom line
… at 7 P.M. every weekday in the New York City area … "The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour" gets its audience and "Hard Copy" gets its audience. What the network bottom-liners cannot ignore is how many more "Hard Copy" fans there are.Walter Goodman, New York Times, 13 Feb. 1994
One of Murdock's first acts was to phase out pineapple production; his bottom-liners noted that it cost about $100 a day to pay a pineapple worker on Lanai, compared with only $3.50 in Taiwan.Peter Collier, Audubon, January 1995
They weren't yet jaded by budget constraints, reality checks, and bottom-liners with no imagination.Kristin D. Zeit, Healthcare Design, August 2012

Word History

First Known Use

1975, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of bottom-liner was in 1975

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Cite this Entry

“Bottom-liner.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bottom-liner. Accessed 19 Dec. 2025.

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