Bank

How to spell bank

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bank

What does bank mean?

1. nounA financial institution that holds, lends, and manages money.
2. nounThe sloping land along the edge of a river, lake, or other body of water.
3. verbTo deposit money or conduct business with a financial institution.
4. verbTo tilt or incline, especially of an aircraft turning to one side.

Bank in a sentence

• noun

  The bank approved her mortgage application within a week.

• noun

  They spread a blanket on the grassy bank beside the river.

• verb

  She chose to bank her bonus rather than spend it.

• verb

  The pilot had to bank sharply to avoid the storm cloud.

• noun

  He transferred his savings to a different bank for a better interest rate.

• noun

  Heavy rain caused the muddy bank to collapse into the stream.

Where does bank come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word bank traces back to a Germanic root that meant a raised ridge of earth or a bench, the same family that gives us the words bench and bunk. The land sense, an embankment or the sloping edge of a river, came into English in the early Middle Ages directly from this Old Norse and Old English stock, where banki and similar forms described a mound or shelf. The financial sense arrived later, in the 1400s and 1500s, by a more roundabout route: it came through French and Italian banca, meaning a money-changer's bench or counter, since dealers literally conducted business across a long bench in the marketplace. That same Italian banca also gives us bankrupt, from banca rotta, a 'broken bench', because a failed trader's bench was said to be smashed. All these meanings share one underlying picture of a long raised surface, which is why a row of switches or a tilt of an aircraft also became known as a bank.

How the word is built

• bank (from Germanic root meaning a raised ridge, mound, or bench)