Finance

How to spell finance

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce finance

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does finance mean?

1. nounThe management of money, especially large sums, investments, and the funding of activities.
2. nounThe monetary resources and money matters of a person or organisation, usually considered as a whole.

Finance in a sentence

• She works in corporate finance at a downtown bank.

• After the divorce she had to sort out her personal finance carefully.

• The course covered accounting and finance in the first term.

• The company kept its finance in remarkably good order.

Where does finance come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the Old French finance, meaning 'a payment, a settlement, or the ending of a debt', which was built on the verb finer, 'to settle a debt' or 'to end'. That verb in turn traces back to the Latin finis, which literally meant 'an end, a boundary, or a limit'; the link is that settling a debt brought a matter to its end. English borrowed the word in the 1300s, at first carrying the sense of a ransom or a payment that closed an obligation. Over the following centuries the meaning broadened from a single settlement to the whole business of managing money, especially large sums and public revenue. The same Latin finis sits inside everyday relatives such as 'final', 'finish', and 'define', and remembering that 'fin' root helps fix the single n and the -ance ending in the spelling.

How the word is built

• fin- (from finis: end, settlement)
• -ance (noun suffix)