money

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈmʌn.i/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English moneie, moneye,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French moneie (“money, coin; change”) (modern French monnaie),^[2][5][3] from Latin monēta (“mint; coinage, money”),^[5][3][2] from Monēta, a title of the goddess Juno, near whose temple on the Capitoline Hill in Rome money was coined.^[5][3][2][6] The name was traditionally explained from monēre (“to remind, warn, admonish”), as “the admonishing goddess”,^[5][7][8] but Etymonline calls the etymology difficult;^[5] Weekley suggests Moneta may be an old goddess name unconnected with monēre,^[9] and Barnhart mentions a possible origin in an Etruscan family name.^[10] The word is a doublet of mint (the place where coins are made), which came into Old English as mynet through an early Germanic borrowing of monēta.^[10][11][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Funds, means, anything convertible into money (mid-13th century, as moonay); coin, metal currency (about 1300).^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English money meant coin, and in particular a given coinage or denomination;^[12][13] it was applied to other objects serving the same purpose from about 1400.^[12][14] Its extension to paper accepted as a substitute for coin dates from the early 19th century.^[5][12] Monies, “coins”, is found about 1300, and the sense “sums of money” from Bacon's Essays (1625);^[10] Johnson (1755) noted that the word properly had no plural except for single coins, but that monies was formerly used for sums, quoting Shakespeare's Shylock.^[15] The image of money burning a hole in one's pocket is found in the 1520s, the highwayman's your money or your life by 1774,^[5] and money as “wages, pay” from 1887.^[14] In the money (1902) first meant finishing among the prize-winners in a race, and the challenge to put one's money where one's mouth is appears by 1942 in African American speech.^[5][16] Money for jam and money for old rope, British expressions for easily earned money, date from the early 20th century and probably come from military slang.^[17] In American slang money has been an adjective meaning “reliable in a crucial situation” since about 1930,^[18][4] and later simply “excellent”.^[18]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – moonay, funds, means.^[2][5]
• c. 1300 – coin, and mones, coins.^[5][10]
• c. 1400 – other objects serving as money.^[12]
• 1450 – verb monien, to supply with money.^[10]
• 1457 – monyed, wealthy.^[2]
• 1520s – money burning a hole in one's pocket.^[5]
• 1625 – monies, sums of money.^[10]
• 1774 – your money or your life.^[5]
• 1802 – money order.^[10]
• 1819 – banknotes and other paper as money.^[12][14]
• 1887 – wages, pay.^[14]
• 1902 – in the money.^[5]
• 1928 – adjective, reliable in a crucial situation (US).^[4]
• 1942 – put one's money where one's mouth is.^[5]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes, used as a measure of the value of goods and services.
2. The official currency issued by a government; a particular form or denomination of it.
3. Assets or property considered in terms of their value; wealth.
4. Pay, earnings; profit or loss: good money.
5. (formal) Sums of money or funds. In this sense the plural is moneys or monies.
6. A wealthy person or class: old money.
7. (horse racing) The first three places: finished in the money.

Adjective

1. (US, informal) Reliable in a crucial situation: a money player.
2. (US slang) Excellent.

Word family

• moneyless

Related words

• mint
• monetary
• monitor
• admonish
• moneyed
• moidore

Usage notes

Random House lists coin, cash, currency and change as synonyms of the concrete sense, and funds, capital and assets of the sense “wealth”.^[19] Money is the root of all evil shortens the Bible's the love of money is the root of all evil, in the First Epistle to Timothy.^[17][20]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
3. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File
8. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2008), 11th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap
9. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ a b c d e Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ a b c d Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
17. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
18. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
19. ^ Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
20. ^ From Abracadabra to Zeus: Word Histories and Mysteries (2004), Boston: Houghton Mifflin (American Heritage Dictionaries)