From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishnational debtˌnational ˈdebt noun [countable usually singular] PEPGthe total amount of money owed by the government of a country The government taxed fuel highly in order to finance the national debt.
Examples from the Corpus
national debt• And a national debt that took 200 years to reach a trillion bucks, tripled in two presidential terms.• The result was the ballooning national debt.• The implications for one major question of dynamic incidence - the burden of the national debt - are developed in Section 8-5.• On that same day, the Treasury Department will run out of money to pay off the national debt.• The government raised £1,500,000,000 from loans and taxes, while the national debt leapt from £242,900,000 in 1793 to £744,900,000 in 1815.From Longman Business Dictionarynational debtˌnational ˈdebt [uncountable]FINANCE money borrowed and still owed by a country → debt 