public debt

1. 1.

   the total of the nation's debts: debts of local and state and national governments; an indicator of how much public spending is financed by borrowing instead of taxation

   Broaderdebt

Questions about public debt

What does public debt mean?

public debt means "the total of the nation's debts: debts of local and state and national governments; an indicator of how much public spending is financed by borrowing instead of taxation".

Is public debt a common word?

public debt is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.