_Meaning of Waste-book_ (Vol. iii., p. 118.).--The _waste-book_ in a
counting-house is that in which all the transactions of the day, receipts,
payments, &c., are entered miscellaneously as they occur, and of which no
account is immediately taken, no value immediately found; whence, so to
speak, the mass of affairs is undigested, and the wilderness or _waste_ is
uncultivated, and without result until entries are methodically made in the
day-book and ledger; without which latter appliances there would, in
book-keeping, be _waste_ indeed, in the worst sense of the term. The word
_day-book_ explains itself. The word _ledger_ is explained in Johnson's and
in Ash's _Dictionary_, from the Dutch, as signifying a book that lies in
the counting-house _permanently in one place_. The etymology there given
also explains why certain lines used in fishing-tackle, by old Isaak
Walton, and by his disciples at the present day, are called _ledger-lines_.
It, however, does not seem to explain the phrase _ledger-lines_, used in
music; namely, the term applied to those short lines added above or below
the staff of five lines, when the notes run very high or very low, and
which are exactly those which are not _permanent_. Here the French word
_leger_ tempts the etymologist a little.