moneylender

Etymology

It is formed from English money + lender.^[2][3][4][1] Money came from Old French monoie, from Latin monēta (“mint, coined money”),^[3] and lender is a mid-15th-century agent noun from lend.^[3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person who lends money at interest: 1598, in Florio's dictionary A Worlde of Wordes,^[2] which glosses banchiere as "a banker or Lombard, or a money lender".^[1] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also gives 1598.^[5] Etymonline, under the spelling money-lender, has only 1765,^[3] and Dictionary.com has 1775–85.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The meaning has stayed close to its parts, but dictionaries narrow it to a business: someone who lends at interest as a living.^[6][2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged specifies a pawnbroker, and Wiktionary notes that the term is used especially of lenders outside the official financial industry.^[5][1] The related moneylending appears later, as an adjective in Foote's Commissary (1765) and as a noun in Bentham's Defence of Usury (1787).^[2]

Timeline

• 1598 – a person whose business is lending money at interest.^[2][5]
• 1765 – the adjective moneylending.^[2]
• 1787 – the noun moneylending.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person whose business is lending money at interest: The farmers owed more to the local moneylender each year.^[2][6][5]
2. Specifically, a pawnbroker.^[5]

Word family

• moneylending

Related words

• money
• lender
• lend

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins