A receipt is a piece of paper or digital record proving you paid for something. When you buy lunch at a restaurant, the server gives you a receipt showing what you ordered and how much you paid. When your parents shop online, they receive an email receipt confirming their purchase.

Receipts serve as proof that a transaction happened. If you need to return a defective toy, the store will ask for your receipt to verify you bought it there. Businesses keep receipts to track their expenses, and families save receipts for expensive items in case something breaks during the warranty period.

People sometimes say “show me the receipts” when they want proof that something really happened, borrowing the word's meaning of reliable evidence.

You might also encounter receipt in old-fashioned cookbooks, where it once meant a recipe or set of instructions for making something, though this usage has mostly disappeared. Today, when someone says receipt, they almost always mean that slip of paper proving a purchase.