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cashier

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English has two words spelled cashier: the verb meaning to dismiss from service, borrowed from Dutch, and the noun for a person in charge of money, from French caissier.[1][2][3]

Pronunciation

  • UK: /kəˈʃɪə/[4]

cashier1 dismiss from service

Etymology

The verb to dismiss is borrowed from Dutch casseren (“to disband soldiers; to rescind a will”),[5][6][1][7] which the OED and the Shorter Oxford also call Flemish;[5][8] Barnhart and Etymonline give Middle Dutch casseren, also kaseeren, to cast off, discharge.[2][6] The OED cites Kiliaan for the Dutch phrases "to disband soldiers" and "to rescind a will", and compares German kassieren.[5] The Dutch verb is from Middle French casser (“to break; to discharge, annul”).[6][1][7][8] Barnhart, Etymonline and Partridge trace the French verb to Late Latin cassō (“to annul”), from cassus (“void, empty”),[2][6][9] and Partridge rejects a source in quassō (“to shake, shatter”);[9] the Shorter Oxford, the Oxford Dictionary of English, Weekley and Dictionary.com take it from quassō, the source of quash.[8][10][11][12] The OED notes that French verbs taken into Dutch and German often keep the French infinitive ending as part of the stem, but that few such verbs reached English.[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To discharge or disband troops: 1580, in Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives.[5]

Semantic evolution

The OED thinks the word probably came into English with the campaign in the Netherlands of 1585,[5] and Barnhart explains it by the contact of English soldiers with the Dutch there.[2] Early spellings were casseir and casseere, the latter in 1592 in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit.[2][3][9] From disbanding troops (until 1736) it passed to dismissing a person from service in general (1592), and then, from 1599, to dismissing an officer from a command, which in the army and navy meant disgrace and permanent exclusion.[5][8] It was also used for annulling a thing (1596–1650), and since 1603 for discarding or getting rid of something.[5] In Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor Bardolph's cashiered seems to mean relieved of one's cash.[5] Weekley lists it among the military words English took from the Low Countries, with furlough and roster.[11]

Timeline

  • 1580 – to disband troops (obsolete by 1736).[5]
  • 1592 – to dismiss from service, spelled casseere.[5][2]
  • 1596 – to annul (obsolete by 1650).[5]
  • 1599 – to dismiss an officer from a command, in disgrace.[5]
  • 1603 – to discard, cast off.[5]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To dismiss someone from service, especially to dismiss an officer from the armed forces formally and in disgrace: The court-martial ordered the major cashiered.[1][5][8]
  2. To discard or get rid of something.[1][5]
  3. (obsolete, 1580–1736) To disband troops.[5][8]

cashier2 person in charge of money

Etymology

The person in charge of money is borrowed from French caissier (“treasurer”),[5][6][2][11] or, in other dictionaries, Dutch cassier or its French source;[13][8][10][3] Etymonline and Klein name kassier as the possible immediate source.[6][7] The French word is formed from caisse (“money box”) and the suffix -ier,[2][5] and caisse is from Old Occitan caisa,[13] or caissa in Dictionary.com,[12] from Vulgar Latin *capsea,[13] from Latin capsa (“box, case”),[13][12] the source of case "box".[12] Klein stresses that it is not derived from cash, though cash comes from the same French word;[7][6] Johnson had derived it from cash.[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person who has charge of the cash of a bank or business, paying and receiving money and keeping the account: 1596, in Thomas Nashe's Haue with you to Saffron-Walden.[5][2]

Semantic evolution

Merriam-Webster dates the noun to 1593 and Dictionary.com to 1570–80.[1][12] Johnson (1755) defined it as "he that has charge of the money".[14] A sense "money-dealer" was used from 1643 to 1687.[5] In American banking the word also names one of the senior officers responsible for the money received and paid out.[1] Collins adds the person who takes payments in a shop and the bank clerk called a teller in other varieties.[15]

Timeline

  • 1596 – one who has charge of the cash of a bank or business.[5][2]
  • 1643 – a money-dealer (obsolete by 1687).[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A person who takes customers' payments in a shop, restaurant or other business: The cashier counted out my change.[15][1]
  2. A bank employee who receives deposits and pays out money; a teller.[15][1]
  3. A senior officer of a bank or company responsible for the money it receives and pays out.[1][5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  7. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ a b c Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  10. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  12. ^ a b c d e Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  13. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  14. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  15. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins