WordNet
n. 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
Usage examples of "public debt".
The public debt was soaring because of their demands for new temples.
Gio didn't mind visiting his friends in the hold and doing a few tricks for the bored guards, but when it came to paying off a public debt, it was always someone else's turn.
Proofs of both these practices have been furnished, and by either of them that invaluable fund is lost which ought to pay our public debt.
Chase tells me the public debt has gone from ninety million dollars to a half billion dollars.
OR a competent insurance actuary with staff would calculate the commitment and it would show in the National Public Debt.
It is already ascertained that the amount paid into the treasury for that year has been between eleven and twelve millions of dollars, and that the revenue accrued during the same term exceeds the sum counted on as sufficient for our current expenses, and to extinguish the public debt within the period heretofore proposed.
Why do I hear nothing of the application of their estates to the public debt?
Yet longing was notched not by a fear of rejection or by the awkwardness of the situation, but by his concern that this was only circumstantially different from dozens of evenings he had spent with women who were no more than joyless functionaries, expressions of public debt.