Banking

How to spell banking

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce banking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does banking mean?

1. nounThe business or activity of managing money through banks, including deposits, loans, and payments.
2. nounThe act of tilting or leaning into a curve, as an aircraft, vehicle, or sloped road does when turning.

Banking in a sentence

• She built a long career in investment banking before retiring.

• The steep banking of the racetrack helps cars hold the bend at speed.

• Online banking lets him pay every bill from his phone.

• Passengers felt the sharp banking as the plane swung toward the runway.

Where does banking come from?

Language of origin: Italian

The financial sense of banking traces back to the Italian word banca, which literally meant 'bench' or 'table', because in late medieval Italy the money-changers of cities like Florence and Venice conducted their trade seated at long benches in the marketplace. The same Italian banca gives us the modern word 'bank', and the failed money-changer whose bench was broken gives us 'bankrupt', from banca rotta meaning 'broken bench'. English picked up 'bank' in the financial sense during the 1500s, and 'banking' as the name for the trade followed naturally with the English '-ing' ending. A quite separate root lies behind 'banking' in the sense of a tilting slope or an aircraft leaning into a turn: that comes from the Old Norse banki, meaning a raised ridge or mound of earth, the same source as the bank of a river. Both threads now share the single spelling, which is mercifully regular and rarely trips writers up.

How the word is built

• bank (from Italian banca: money-changer's bench)
• -ing (forming a noun/gerund)