money definition

English money definition

Alternative forms

• monie (archaic)
• mony (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English moneye, moneie, money, borrowed from Anglo-Norman muneie (“money”), from Latin monēta (“money, a place for coining money, coin, mint”), from the name of the temple of Juno Moneta in Rome, where a mint was.

In this sense, displaced native Old English feoh, whence English fee. Doublet of mint, ultimately from the same Latin word but through Germanic and Old English, and of manat, through Russian and Azeri or Turkmen.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmʌni/, [ˈmɐni]

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈmʌni/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌni
• Hyphenation: mon‧ey

Noun

money (usually uncountable, plural monies or moneys) (plural used only in certain senses)

1. A legally or socially binding conceptual contract of entitlement to wealth, void of intrinsic value, payable for all debts and taxes, and regulated in supply.
2. A generally accepted means of exchange and measure of value.

   I cannot take money, that I did not work for.

   Before colonial times cowry shells imported from Mauritius were used as money in Western Africa.

   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 1, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     Then there came a reg'lar terror of a sou'wester same as you don't get one summer in a thousand, and blowed the shanty flat and ripped about half of the weir poles out of the sand. We spent consider'ble money getting 'em reset, and then a swordfish got into the pound and tore the nets all to slathers, right in the middle of the squiteague season.

   • 2013 August 10, “Can China clean up fast enough?”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:

     At the same time, it is pouring money into cleaning up the country.

3. A currency maintained by a state or other entity which can guarantee its value (such as a monetary union).

   money supply;  money market

4. Hard cash in the form of banknotes and coins, as opposed to cheques/checks, credit cards, or credit more generally.
5. The total value of liquid assets available for an individual or other economic unit, such as cash and bank deposits.
6. Wealth; a person, family or class that possesses wealth.

   He was born with money.

   He married money.

   • 2023 July 15, Megan Nolan, “‘I grew up on an “estate from hell” but I have no idea what class I am’: novelist Megan Nolan on the conundrum of identity”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     I grew up in Ballybeg, neither of my working-class parents came from money or went to university, so I was part of a working-class family, I assumed.

7. An item of value between two or more parties used for the exchange of goods or services.
8. A person who funds an operation.

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:money

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

• mint

Descendants

Translations

References

• money on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Further reading

• “money”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “money”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “money”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• myeon, yenom

Middle English money definition

Noun

money

1. Alternative form of moneye