Cashed

How to spell cashed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cashed

What does cashed mean?

1. verbConverted a cheque, note, or other instrument into money; received money for it.

Cashed in a sentence

• She cashed her pay cheque at the bank on Friday.

• He cashed in his savings bonds to cover the deposit.

Where does cashed come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of the verb 'cash', which traces back to the Latin capsa, meaning a 'box' or 'case' for holding things. That word passed into Italian as cassa and into Old French as casse, both naming the chest or drawer where a merchant kept ready money. English adopted 'cash' in the late 1500s, at first meaning the money box itself, and only later the coins and notes stored inside it; the sense of the container faded while the sense of the money endured. The verb 'to cash', meaning to convert a cheque or note into actual money, grew from that noun, and adding the regular suffix '-ed' forms the past tense 'cashed'. Note how it shares no real ancestry with 'cached', its homophone, which comes from the French cacher meaning 'to hide'; that difference in origin is the cleanest way to remember the different spellings.

How the word is built

• cash (ready money)
• -ed (past-tense/participle suffix)